I have my father’s nose and his dazzling “I’m always right” disorder.

A few months ago, I found myself at brunch with my father and his girlfriend—a woman I have come to regard with a peculiar fondness, despite her undisclosed political leanings and unsettling devotion to the spectacle that is Disneyland.

Just after we ordered and right before the food came, my dad and I fell into one of our signature debates. This time: abortion. The topic, abortion, was perhaps ill-suited for a casual meal. But for us, such conversations have long been a kind of secular ritual, as natural as playing catch on the first sunny days of spring beside the magnolia tree of my childhood.

And yet, even as I write this, I hit a wall.  My thoughts lurch forward, then collapse. The words scatter like startled birds. Today, I was moved to write because of someone else’s pain—a strange, maybe morbid source of inspiration—but she said something that struck me: that anger is the greatest motivator. That when you’re angry, it’s like a fire is lit beneath you and doesn’t need kindling. It burns on its own, fueled only by the visceral feeling that something was taken from you.

I’ve often joked that my best work is born of pain—of that angsty, “I have something to say” kind of ache that seems to be the artist’s inheritance. That joke held true for most of my life—until recently. 

If you peel back a few layers, I feel the anger. But anger has frozen me, like a passenger locked in the backseat of my own mind, unsure where we’re headed.

But back to brunch.

We were waist-deep in pre-election chatter, wading through the usual noise, when my father—true to his libertarian instinct—slung abortion across the table like a gauntlet, puncturing his girlfriend’s lukewarm take: “I don’t think who you vote for defines your character.”

My father, a military man wrapped in the faded fabric of old codes and glories, had a lesson for everything. He used to sit at the edge of my bed like a sentry, dispensing advice as if it were law. There was one mantra he always repeated: “Character is what you do when no one’s watching.”

I mouthed those words in silence, watching his girlfriend’s face, then turned my eyes to him. And when our eyes met, something hollow echoed through me. It felt like locking eyes with a stranger who knew too much. It felt like being alone in a room you used to call home.

All my father’s flaws aside, he’s always had a clear moral compass when it comes to human rights and democracy—an anomaly among middle-aged white men raised in this country.

(Tangent warning.)

As I sit here typing, a wave hits me—memory as undertow. I’m sitting in a coffee shop now, but suddenly, in my mind, he walks through the door. My dad. Clean-shaven. Hair neat. Trousers and a polo. I can smell his cologne before he even sits down. He takes the chair across from me, asks about work with that same curious glimmer in his eye. He makes a joke about my overpriced latte; I insist he try it, he declines, as always.

The image dissolves as quickly as it formed, dragging me back to a more permanent memory.

Like a great blue heron, I remain still—not from peace, but from necessity. I do not move. The world stirs around me, but I sit—watching, waiting—bothered only by the soft rhythm of the waves, brushing the shore like a memory that refuses to fade. In and out. Out and in. Each crash a whisper of something -

I was maybe ten or eleven. It was my birthday. My dad insisted on driving me to school, and stopping at McDonald’s for breakfast. Birthdays were serious holidays in my house, sacred. I felt lit from the inside, special in the way only a child on their birthday can. To this day I hold them to high standards for myself and loved ones. 

I don’t remember the details—only sensations. The early morning light peaking through the glass onto my hair. The sweetness only a McDonald’s orange juice can have. The color of his shirt. The wear on his shoes. His gaze, steady and focused on me.  The moment flickers like a home video that never quite finishes playing. I can still smell his cologne, the way it clung to his skin like memory does to mine.

Bird watching—a strange metaphor, maybe—but that’s what this has started to feel like: the stillness, the anticipation, the silence pierced by a sudden rustle in the leaves-

The waiter filled our water 

Suddenly, I was across from them again—my father and his girlfriend—watching the conversation mutate. Somewhere between my dad prodding his girlfriend to speak on abortion and her uncertain mutterings and shrugs, I fell out of participant and into observer. Her face—a collage of confusion and retreat—betrayed the dawning realization that she was out of her depth.

My parents had me at twenty-one. So, yes—abortion jokes have always circled my existence like a vulture. My mom, a Sagittarian atheist with lingering Catholic residue, would never have chosen one. My father—a military man, a Virgo moon, foster-care survivor—once told her he wanted it. That tension, I’ve long understood, is the punchline: neither of them would’ve gone through with it, and yet the joke has always lingered like a shadow on my origin story.

Trying to break the tension—and because I can’t sit in silence for more than two minutes—I made the joke. The classic one. About how lucky I am to be here at all. A poorly timed peace offering, aimed at humanizing myself to my dad’s “non-political” pro-life girlfriend.

But her face—this time it wasn’t just discomfort. It was distaste. Like I’d whispered a secret she hadn’t known existed.

But soon I was back in that familiar place: watching. Though pileated woodpeckers are large and bold—bright red crests flashing like fire against the bark—their restless dance up and down the tree forces me to lift my binoculars from my eyes again and again, chasing their deliberate movements as if trying to catch a thought slipping just out of reach-

The details are irrelevant. What matters is this: I watched my father unravel. She asked questions. He dodged. She pressed. He fumbled.

Then—like a man in a confessional—he spoke plainly.

It was a one-night stand. He had been in the military. She hadn’t told him she was pregnant. He had been trapped.

Trapped.

The word landed like a stone in my stomach. And just like that, I stood. I walked. Past the waiter, past the door. And then I was running. I heard him call my name—“Hannah”—but it was faint. Like something you dream and forget by morning.

I found refuge in this alley, perched on an upside-down crate where cooks took their smoke break. My mind tore through itself, unraveling—rewriting his words, undoing his lies, rebutting with the truth. Most people are told the story of how their parents fell in love—how against all odds, they made it work. I was no different. 

My mom and dad had dated only a few months when she got pregnant by accident. Not ideal, no, but they were smitten. My mom—spirited, terrified—dropped out of college and had me. My dad stood by her side through it all. They were young, poor, reckless with love. 

But the lies kept piling up, ghosts from the past I thought I’d buried—like the work trip to Germany he never took, or the education on his LinkedIn claiming Northeastern, though he never went to college. The weight of it all pressed down until a cook leaned over and asked what I was doing there. Out of breath and sweating, I stood and mumbled something I can’t even remember.

That was eight months ago. The last time I saw him.

Since then, I’ve stumbled through what I think are the eight stages of grief. None of it feels linear. No feeling has fully landed. I’ve cried, yes—but mostly I’ve been still. Watching my life like a bird behind glass lens.

I spent ten dollars to order my dad’s military records. He was discharged in 1998. I was born in 2000. You can do the math. I dug through photo albums to find one of him and my mother—pregnant with me—outside their first home. I requested alumni records; no one by his name attended.

I even bargained with him. When confronted, he tells me I’m too young. That I don’t understand the world. That I’ve been brainwashed.

But sometimes, finding even small proof of truth feels like victory. A scorned loved one doesn’t always want revenge. Sometimes we just want acknowledgement: Yes. I did this to you.

I was raised on the myth of young love—two wild kids fumbling through life, tethered to each other by passion and fate. Even after the divorce, I held tight to that story. I believed I was the result of something fierce and real and worth remembering. I wore it like armor. That somewhere in my DNA was the blueprint of two people who loved hard, even when they fell apart.

Now I wonder: maybe he’s just a liar with nothing left to lie about.