Human Touch

Ernest Hemingway, a favorite of mine, uses simplicity to describe complex relationships in his writings. He named his infamous boat Pilar, based on a nickname he had for his second wife Pauline, and after 27 years of adventures on board, he admitted a year before his suicide that the boat was ‘the one true thing in his life”. This seemed such a juxtaposition for what he truly craved in his life, as he admitted, “In our darkest moments, we don’t need solutions or advice. What we yearn for is simply human connection–a quiet presence, a gentle touch. These small gestures are the anchors that hold us steady when life feels too much”.

A few weeks after my discovery, or unraveling, of my family tree, I realized I was not going to get the answers I really craved. My parents, in all forms, have passed away, along with my grandparents, and the majority of my aunts and uncles. In fact, I have only one living uncle. I am not going to find out if my birth father knew about my existence. I cannot know for sure that my mother knew, but I can make educated guesses–based on my dad’s side of the family proclaiming from day one that I didn’t look like any Carter they had ever seen. My mom always said they were just predisposed to that thinking because I was born in ‘the North’, as if Maryland were not considered south of the Mason-Dixon line, and being raised on Old Bay, Domino Sugar, and seeing that Natty Boh sign made me foreign. It seems likely that as I grew from a baby, my mother must have caught a few reflections of another’s eyes, or smile, or laugh. Certainly when I joined the Maryland State Police, when only a few women had, and everyone questioned why I wanted to do ‘something like that’, she might have thought of Gordon, joining the Army and serving 4 tours of duty. I have fixated a bit that at 91 years-old, when she confessed to having regrets to my sister, the main one was her passion for gambling and wasting time and money on playing bingo so much. In a perfect world, I would like to think she thought about my conception more than a coveted B-15 or O-72. But it is not a perfect world, and I am choosing not to hold her to a standard that demands that type of barter.

My dad however, must have had more than mere suspicion. He surely had probable cause and reasonable doubt. His entire family voiced their suspicions from day one and surely he could never have looked at me and found any puzzle piece that matched what he was searching for. But. In my recent discovery, or uncovering, I’m taking this fact as one that I will hold closer to my heart this coming Father’s Day. My dad in all probability did suspect, or know, that I was not his. He made the decision, however easily or however difficult, to love me anyway, and claim me as his own. So, of course, I will carry that honor tightly, as he is forever my dad.

My family dynamics have changed. My sister, by DNA percentages at least, is now my half-sister. I discovered I have 2 other half-siblings. A brother, 3 years younger, has not been in contact with the family for about 35 years and has asked not to be in the future. I am respecting that, as the point of this journey was never to bring pain to anyone and clearly to make a decision that excludes half of your family is burning more than a bridge but scorching the ground that contains the very roots. Since he doesn’t know of my existence, I’m sure finding out now would not be a cause he would celebrate. My half-sister Emily also recently found out that Gordon was her father. We have talked a few times and she is very bright and intuitive. She is 20 years younger and has her own young family and crosses to bear at this point in her life. Gordon was aware of her birth so that mystery doesn’t exist for her. Hopefully, in the future, we can slowly get to know one another and move forward as friends.

From the beginning, my cousin Christine, Uncle Tony’s daughter, has been the rudder in the navigation. She has had longer to process all of this, and she is able to do it with compassion and skill. She is like finding a gold link in a sterling silver bracelet. She has a brother and sister, and each of Tony and Gordon’s 3 sisters had children. There are a plethora of new relatives to meet.

But I started with Tony, Gordon’s brother, and Crete, Gordon’s second wife. They were the closest to my birth father and know many of the stories of his life, and the stories I need to hear to know the man.

Tony lives near Surfside, South Carolina, where I traveled last week to visit. Crete recently moved from Texas and agreed to fly in to meet me at the same time. My long-time friend Melanie went with me on what I described as ‘my quest for connections’. It has been twenty years since I had been by my dad’s hometown of Garland NC, but I decided to drive instead of flying so I could add in that stop on the way. Driving south on 95 through Baltimore, Washington, and Virginia is not for the faint of heart with the volume of cars, construction, and graduates of Grand Theft Auto seemingly taking an actual wheel. We decided to move to a side road after we crossed into North Carolina and slow the pace down. By the time we got to Garland, the red clay dirt and empty tobacco barns were fairly common landscape. My dad’s house, off Rt. 701, looked almost the same. There was a new red metal roof that I had never heard rain ping on, but the vegetable garden, and the grape vines I had forgotten, looked like time had been frozen. A scattering of child toys in the front yard, and different cars in the driveway further identified that my dad did not live there anymore, and yet I felt his path had been there as surely as those grape vines roots that he once told me ‘took to Carolina soil and never let go’. We parked by the side of the road for a few minutes, long enough to get red dirt in the tires, before we again headed south.

I had rented a second floor condo right on the beach in Surfside believing the sound of the waves and the glorious sunrises would strengthen the soul. It’s hard to sleep when you are used to sharing a bed with a husband and 2 or 3 small dogs that expand in the night. At 5 am the first morning, I awoke to the surf crashing and a light show in the sky as a major storm thundered by. Melanie was also awake and we sat on the covered porch, drinking coffee, and watching the furies collide. Neither of us mentioned we hoped it wasn’t an omen.

Uncle Tony had suggested we meet at Damons, a seafood and ribs restaurant right on the water, at 1:00 for lunch. We were sitting on a bench waiting for 3 people–a man and 2 women (Tony’s girlfriend Linda was also joining us)–when I mentioned to Melanie that it felt a bit like a blind date. We didn’t know exactly what the people looked like in current time, I had seen older photos from Christine, and they didn’t really know what we looked like either.

“I should have told them I would have on a hat or something.” I told Melanie.

“I’ve never seen you wear a hat. I’ve seen you buy hats, but never wear one.”

“Well, maybe I should have told them I’d be carrying a hat.”

A man and 2 women appeared in the open elevator at that moment, and looked at us expectantly until we realized we had both sat forward and looked at them hopefully.

“Wow, this could be very awkward,” I murmured to Melanie at the three slid by us with one side eye. “What if we don’t have anything to talk about. What if they are regretting agreeing to meet us because they are thinking what in the hell is the point in all of this?”

“That isn’t going to happen…”

The elevator opened again and Tony and Crete and Linda got off. No one had on a hat, but we all seem to recognize something, maybe hope, maybe fate–on our faces. They all smiled and held out their arms for hugs. We went all-in.

We finished a three hour lunch and shared photos and stories and a few near-tears. We watched the ocean fold in and out, making the same pattern and then making new ones, as it tumbled before us, bigger than life or death itself. We laughed and took new photos together. There were no answers but there were connections. My smile looked like Tony’s smile. They thought my eyes looked like aunts and cousins. I finally had a family saying, “she looks like every Carey we know.” We parted as we met, with more hugs, but with tighter embraces.

The next day we decided to meet at Tony’s house where I could watch the video of Gordon’s ceremonial burial at Arlington Cemetery. This would be an emotional viewing if it were that of a stranger, but processing that this was my father was difficult. Watching the synchronized procession, the folding of the flag, the horse drawn carriage, the riderless horse, and the 21-gun salute were both inspiring and despairing. The video captured spectators on the surrounding hill, there perhaps to watch the changing of the guard for the Tomb of the Unknown soldier, who were privileged to see an actual burial on their visit, and I felt a bit like them as I sat there in my new jean capris and ombre shirt. We were sitting on a comfortable sectional sofa, having wine and cheese that I thought might not stay down as I listened to all the awards and colored stars this man had been awarded for twenty-one years of service. Two of the people sitting with me had known and loved this man, and clearing mourned him–10 years ago when it was filmed, and today, in this small beach town, remembering how much they had lost when he passed. I felt anguished that I had never known this Gordon Carey–this stalwart man who knowingly went into battle for 8 years in heavy combat. I finally felt the sorrow of never using one of those new fat crayons, probably a red one, to make what I’m sure would have been stars, on a birthday card, created by a child for her father on his birthday. I finally mourned that loss, the loss of what could have been, more than I could mourn what had been.

Hemingway, always the great muse, also said, and I felt it so powerfully that afternoon, ‘it’s like you’re on the other side of a lost world that’s always been so seductively near and simultaneously far…”.

When the video ended, Tony filled our glasses again and suggested we watch a movie that he and Gordon had talked about many times in the years after the war. Tony told us that Gordon said the movie, written by a Lt. Colonel who also flew helicopters during Viet Nam, was the closest thing to reality that he had witnessed. And so we sat and watched the DVD of “We Were Soldiers” with the volume set at 100 for 120 minutes. I know in life there are people who become experts in their field and are sought after for pairing suggestions–like wine with food. Uncle Tony should possibly be considered for the sommelier of matching funeral tapes with PTSD inspiring Hollywood adaptations of real life events. At the end of the film, my body was still vibrating from the sound of the helicopters and watching what had to be 6000 people slaughtered with such brutality that John Wick in comparison would seem a Walmart greeter.

Uncle Tony then suggested we go to Olive Garden for dinner because it is one of his favorites, and the servers know him by name. By the time the meal came, and we had a round of Margarita’s, we were talking about home projects and the upcoming bikers week in neighboring Myrtle Beach. At the end of dinner, we said our goodbyes. It was a good first visit. We had found connections simply by just being who and what we were. When we hugged, it was with a little more depth of feeling, a holding on if you will, of something precious and rare. A gift of time, and of grace for how we had all arrived to this moment.

Later, as I sat and watched the ocean from the deck the last night, my thoughts ran across the ivory keys of memory for the week.

When I am at the end, it won’t be a thing that is the one truth of my life, it will be hopefully, as Bruce says, “You might need something to hold on to, when all the answers, they don’t amount to much, somebody that you could just talk to, and a little bit of that human touch”.

I did after all name my daughter Pilar, just in case.