The Search for My Father (Pt 1): The Ground I Grew Up On
The Search for My Father (Pt 1): The Ground I Grew Up On
A sketch of the small southern Ohio farm where I was raised — a whole world on the surface, with unspoken secrets buried beneath its soil.
I grew up on a small patch of land in rural southern Ohio, a nearly two acre farm that felt bigger than it was. To me, it was a whole world — open fields, worn barn, gravel driveway, and the steady rhythm of a life that was simple on the surface. But as I would later discover, the secrets were buried deep in the soil itself.
The farm was old-fashioned in every sense. We pumped water from a hand-dug well just outside the back door when the water inside dried up. On bad days, my grandfather and I would climb down into the partial cellar to prime the stubborn pump back to life. Everything was basic, patched together and functional. It was a place where very little went to waste, including the table scraps.
Beside the house, the ground stretched into a side lot and then a back field where the ponies grazed and the pigs rooted. A red barn with a silver metal roof sat like a landmark you could see from miles down the road, weathered but dependable. Inside, the hay maul always smelled the same —sun-warmed straw and dust. A small concrete garage, an old corn crib, a hen house, and even an outhouse dotted the property like pieces of a life built through necessity, not design.
There was a big tree in the backyard, and I must have climbed it thousands of times. I think we even nailed boards into it once to make a little clubhouse, though it never looked like much. A small patch of woods beyond our property line became the imagination ground for me and a neighbor boy - we built makeshift rabbit traps out of old boards, camped in his tent, and fished in narrow creeks that wound through the country like tiny veins.
It was a safe place, but sometimes an isolating one. It wasn’t the traditional family unit, and even as a child, I could feel the difference. The farm itself was steady, predictable in its seasons, but the emotions beneath the surface were mixed and sometimes unpredictable — even volatile. That contrast shaped me more than I understood at the time.
A Quiet Absence
From as early as I can remember, I was aware that I didn’t have a father in my life. Kids can’t always name their feelings, but they know when something is missing. For me, it was a void - an ache that I carried without fully understanding it. School events, holidays, watching other kids climb into cars with both parents…those moments sharpened the sting.
“Silence clung to the question of my father, the way dust clings to old floorboards.”
My mother was young, unprepared, and living a life of her own turbulence. She came and went, drifting in and out of the kind of stability a child needs. Because of that, I spent much of my childhood with my grandparents and older relatives — aunts and uncles, extended family, people who filled in as best they could. But rarely did anyone talk about my father, and it always ended with a question mark.
The only story I ever heard was that a certain man — my mom’s first love — was my alleged father. He denied it. His family denied it. And deep down, I doubted it too. My mother claimed a 1978 blood test came back “inconclusive,” but she never showed proof. There were no court records. No documents. No answers. Just a name and a story that didn’t fit.
That uncertainty followed me through my teenage years; rumors, denials, accusations, and uncomfortable encounters with a classmate who I believed was my cousin. Every conversation only deepened the feeling that the story was cracked somewhere beneath the surface.
A Father Figure, Even Without the Title
If there was one steady presence in my life, it was my grandfather. He became my safety net, my protector, the person I found myself longing for when I wasn’t with him. My mother named me after him when I was born — a small truth that carried more weight than I understood back then.
He loved to laugh and carry on. He wore a green farm cap, kept a chew of tobacco tucked in his cheek, and always seemed to know when something needed fixing before anyone else noticed. Some of my favorite memories are simple ones: watching him stand in front of the mirror shaving, the scent of his shaving cream drifting through the room. That usually meant we were going into town, visiting family, or getting dressed for a funeral viewing — moments that gave me a taste of the wider world.
Despite his age — born in 1916, already retired — he carried the responsibility of raising me without much complaint. He gave me a sense of belonging I didn’t have anywhere else. He never claimed to replace the father I didn’t know, but in every way that mattered, he filled the role quietly.
That combination — his steady presence and the silence surrounding my real father — became the ground I grew up on: solid in places, fragile in others.
A Fault Line Beneath the Surface
By the time I reached adulthood, the doubts about my alleged father had hardened into certainty. The story didn’t make sense. My mother’s explanations drifted and changed. And as I learned more about myself, the pieces of the identity puzzle refused to fit.
The older I became, the more the question buried beneath my life started pressing upward, like something hidden under the soil trying to reach light. I didn’t go digging into it deeply — not yet — but the tension was always there — unspoken and unresolved. The tension of that unresolved question was guiding my life in more ways than I could imagine.
The Day the Ground Cracked
The moment everything shifted came years later, long after I’d built a life of my own. I was at a Cincinnati Reds game — a bright, loud, ordinary day in 2013 — when my phone rang. It was my mom.
“I wanted to let you know your dad died,” she said calmly.
I was in my forties by then. My beliefs about her story hadn’t changed. Without thinking, I asked, “Which one?”
She sighed. “I knew you were going to say that.”
Something snapped in me right there in the middle of the ballpark. People cheered in the stands, the game moved on, but inside me, the ground gave way. The call felt cold, mistimed, unnecessary — and completely unlike what such a moment should be for a parent and child.
My immediate reaction wasn’t grief for the man she claimed was my father. It was frustration, anger, and a sharp, rising determination. A need to know once and for all. If she was right — or if she’d been wrong for decades — I deserved the truth. And if her story had shaped my life through silence and uncertainty, then I needed to face whatever lay buried beneath it.
That night, something in me shifted from doubt to resolve. I even called an attorney to ask whether a deceased person’s remains could be DNA tested. I wasn’t leaving this question unanswered any longer. The surface had finally cracked open.
The First Step Downward
Looking back, that phone call was the true beginning of the search — not the DNA tests, not the matches, not the breakthroughs that came later. The dig didn’t start with science. It started with a fracture in the ground I had been standing on my whole life.
This was the moment the past stopped being something I avoided and became something I needed to relentlessly confront and uncover.
What lay beneath would change everything.
Part 2 would begin the descent.
