QSI International School of Phuket

“So Near Yet So Far”

            Samuel stood in front of the cream colored house, admiring the neat trim of the hedges, the blooming petals of the rose bushes, and the flawless blue paint on the window panes. He frowned and looked at the paper clutched in his left hand. It was the right address, but it didn’t look like the right house to him. It didn’t look like the house of somebody who had left their family when their son was two years old. But that’s what Samuel’s dad did.

            Anger rushed through Samuel as he thought once again about the father he never got to know. He thought about how his mom had to scrape money together from her three jobs just to put him through high school, the various parent-teacher meetings his dad was never there for, the ‘Career’ day when Samuel was in third grade, where he had to sit awkwardly at the back of the classroom while the other kids showcased their fireman dads or lawyer moms.

But what made Samuel even angrier than the absences or the abandonment, was that, after a year of searching for his father, he finds out that Lance Reno was living in the next town over. It was a one hour drive. He lived one hour away from the father he never knew, and the worst part was that his dad (if you could call him that) didn’t even send a postcard to let his former family know that he was still alive. Needless to say, Samuel was angry with his father, but he hadn’t come all this way to knock on his father’s door and yell at him.

            Straightening his back and taking a deep breath, Samuel shook away his anger and rung the doorbell. He adjusted his backpack on his shoulders and waited. The door opened, revealing a little eight year old girl with curls. Samuel stared at her, first in shock. Then he noticed her sand blonde hair, like his, and her wide brown eyes, like his, and the freckles sprinkled on her cheeks, very similar to his. She frowned and said hi, whereas Samuel stood there, shocked.

            “Suzy, who’s at the door?”

            She looked back and yelled, “I don’t know, Daddy.”

            Samuel could hear the heavy steps coming towards the door from inside the house, and Suzy backed away from the door.

            He looked a lot like Samuel. Just like Suzy, the man had sand blonde hair, brown eyes, and freckles. And like Samuel, they both had a large build and broad shoulders. He suddenly realized that, though he had been searching for and preparing himself to meet his father for over a year now, Samuel had no inkling as to what to say to him.

            But before Samuel could react, the man ushered Suzy to the living room and came back, closing the door behind him and stepping out onto the porch. He looked at Samuel up and down, inspecting him. His eyes looked anxious, but, unexpectedly, there was no hint of confusion on the man’s face.

            Before Samuel could say anything, the man spoke.

            “What are you doing here?”

            Samuel frowned. “I’m here to see Lance Reno. That’s you, right?”

            The man sighed and rubbed his temples with his forefingers. “Yes, that’s me.”

            Confused, Samuel stayed silent. Why was this man so frustrated? Did Samuel come at a bad time? Did he do something wrong? It seemed as though, without speaking even more than ten words to his father, Samuel had made him angry.

            Lance stayed silent, his head in his hands, looking very frustrated. Samuel decided to speak, “Well… um, my name is Samuel Waldwick…”

            “Yeah, kid, I know who you are.”

            Samuel stared back at the man in front of him, stunned.

            “What do you mean, you know who I am?” Samuel felt not only felt confused, but he also felt as if he knew what his father was about to say.

            Lance sighed again, this time looking uncomfortable, as if he would’ve liked to be anywhere else in the world than on that porch, in front of the son he had abandoned 17 years ago. He shoved his hands in his pockets, looking at the ground.

            “Look, kid, I’m not proud of what I did to you and your mom. And if I were you, I’d about punch me right now. But… listen; I have a real family now. I got two little girls, and a lovely wife. They can’t know I have another kid. I can’t lose another family.”

            Upon hearing this, the anger Samuel had earlier pushed back rushed through his veins once again like a storm.

            “You didn’t lose us, you walked away.” Samuel blurted out.

            He stepped back, dropping his backpack on the floor. This guy knew who his son was, and didn’t do a thing about it? Lance looked at Samuel, angry at what he had just said.

“Look, the way I see it, I did you guys a favor. I wasn’t ready to be a father, not back then.” Samuel glared at him, his eyes blazing with anger, no longer holding any resemblance to the brown eyes he had inherited from his father.

“You didn’t even call, or write once, or send me a birthday card. I’m going to college, and I didn’t even know where to send you the invite to my graduation!”

Samuel thought back to his high school graduation, how he had stood there, accepting his diploma and watching his mother cry tears of joy, and he remembered how he felt: after finishing high school, he still didn’t know who his father was. It seemed as though that lack of vital yet ordinary information overshadowed anything he did learn in high school.

Suddenly, Lance grabbed the front of Samuel’s shirt, his face inches away from Samuel’s nose.

“Is that what this is all about, then? You need money for college? Is that it?”

Violently, Samuel pushed away from his father and grabbed his bag, mumbling to himself, “You’re so far from who I hoped you were.”

 Angry and disappointed, he walked away into the dark, yelling back, “I don’t need anything from you!”

Years later, Samuel thought back to that moment, when he realized that his father wasn’t anything near what he expected him to be. He had believed that, in order to move on with the next step in his life and become the man he wanted to be, he needed to know first what kind of man his father was. He had imagined his father to have been, despite abandoning his family, a decent man who had gotten his life together. But the truth was, that man back at the cream colored house with the two little girls and the lovely wife, wasn’t anything near the kind of man Samuel hoped to one day become. He was just another husband in a suburban home, with what appeared to be large skeletons in his closet.

After that first, and last, encounter with his father, it was obvious to Samuel that, even though they lived so near to one another back then, in his mind, they really lived worlds apart.