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I had just finished getting dressed. My pants had been ironed, my shirt was pressed, and my tie was straight. It was hard to get the tie on right. If my dad wasn’t already waiting for me at the auditorium he could have helped me, but after a life time of servitude to the dammed leash it finally cooperated. As I walked out into my living room I saw my mother sitting on the couch. I motioned to her that we were ready to leave, but she didn’t move.
“Cmon, mom I’m going to be late for my own graduation” I nagged as I walked over to get her up.

It wasn’t until then that I had gotten a good look at her, and I wasn’t prepared for what I saw. She sat at the edge of the couch. Her body shaking in an almost frightful way; it was as if something had torn at her very soul. The valley of her dress soaked in tears as her mascara ran down past her quivering lips. Her hair that she had taken such great lengths to prepare was now a poor memory of its former image. The carefully structured curls now dismembered and pushed forward. Although I could not see her face I could tell that she had been in this state for a while and it wasn’t going to stop soon.

I wanted to comfort her, but it’s like the boy who cried wolf. This isn’t the first time she has been like this. It’s always something so insignificant that her emotions have blown out of proportion. Still she is my mother. But to cry so much just be cause I’m graduating. I guess it is a female thing because I know my dad would never cry like this. All I can really think about is my family and friends waiting for me.
“Why are you crying?” I tried to ask as I thought about how my friends were going to hate me for being late. “I’m not dieing I’m just graduating.”

I didn’t really expect her to stop, but she didn’t even move. She just sat there wallowing in her sorrows. It’s hard to tell when she is crying because she is happy, or because she is sad, but I expected her to react in some way. I thought she would tell me I’m wrong at the very least. I was waiting for her to burst out “My baby is leaving me, he’s going off to college and getting married, and I’ll never see him again!” But she remained motionless.

“M-Mom, are you ok? Hello?” I murmured as sincere as I could ever be. Now she had my attention. Now, I really was concerned. Although, not concerned enough to forget that I was going to be late. It’s still probably something her bipolar disorder had concocted, but it wasn’t her problem I was concerned about, just my mother.

“M-mom are-” I started to ask her again but at that instance, she broke her silence and lunged on to me. She hugged me and I could feel her heart beating. It was like her heart was being chased by something. It was as if my own heart was in slow motion. At the same time while her heart was in fast forward it seemed her lungs were rewinding. Every breath repeated itself but never played long enough to fully take in the air around her.

I tried to comfort her, but what do I do? Do I ask her what’s on her mind or tell her I feel her pain. In the end I just sat there stuck in her embrace. After a while she said she told me she loved me. But it was so hard to understand what she was saying. The words were there but she could not set them free. Every word mashed and disheveled. They seemed to be fighting to get out but by the time they got to my ears they were too exhausted to give me the message. With every word that broke through, a new burst of tears flowed out. She began to tell me that she loved me again. All she seemed to be able to do was explain how sorry she was and reiterate how much she loved me.
“Yea mom, I love you too.”
That’s all I could say. What else could I do? Sympathy isn’t my area of expertise, and I can’t say anything unless I know what’s wrong. I tried to tell her I wasn’t going anywhere. I wanted her to know that graduating really isn’t the end of the word, but it didn’t affect her. The twisting and turning her body gave off started to slow as her breathing slowed back to almost normal. She was still making sure I knew that she loved me, but I could tell that the worst had past. She seemed to be calming down.

“When you go to your graduation there’s going to be someone out in the crowd that you don’t know,” she started to explain. “Don’t worry, he probably won’t come up to you, he will probably just watch from a distance.”
I didn’t understand, it’s like now she’s telling me a story. Her tone was as if she was a different person. Her breathing was back to normal and the tears were no longer flowing.
“I’m telling you this because he wants you to know he loves you,” she continues on, “He knows he can’t ever come up to you but he’s so proud of you.”
Without a thought I ask the most obvious question a person in my position could ask. “Who?” She looked up at me with a face so serious I was afraid to look away. “Your real father.”
At that instant the tears that had ceased were bursting from her eyes. From then on it’s me that is motionless, but she doesn’t stop her story.

Pushing through the tears she delivers the message, “Doug isn’t you real father, your real dad is going to be somewhere in the audience, watching you.” She goes on but I can’t tell what she is saying. As her body shakes violently she tries to tell me she loves me, but I cant really hear anything anymore. The strings that keep my mind tied down are no longer doing their job. They remain tangled in all the thoughts running through my head as my mind floats away. I pull on my collar completely disrupting the leash I had so delicately prepared. My shirt and pants now wrinkled. My shoulder dampened from her tears. Thoughts about my dad and half my family are surging throughout my mind.

Grasping me tightly once again I can feel each pound as her heart jumps around trying to break through her body. I can hear a slight echo. Every other beat seems louder and louder. I can feel the harmony between the two completely different beats. I think the echo is me. My heart and hers, racing faster and faster. Both beats surging throughout our bodies is too much for me. But then she says something to catch my attention. “No I’m just kidding; he’s not going to be there.”
“What? What kind of joke is this? You mean he’s not going to be there or he doesn’t exist?” I wanted to scream, but I kept my feelings and these words to myself.
“He’s on the big island so he wont be anywhere near you,” she says as she starts back into this story teller mode. “He has another family and you have a half brother. He doesn’t have any pictures of you but he is proud of you. He knows to stay away or Dino is going to kick his a**, but there’s a whole other family out there that loves you.”

Its there that I know she was trying her best to comfort me like I wanted to comfort her. However, its not really working like she thinks. Now there’s so many questions unanswered that my mind is unable to fathom what is going on. I can’t sort this through, not now at least. I finally regained control of my body and I decided to push everything to the back of my mind for now. I told my mother I loved her and once I could no longer feel her heart we got up to leave.

I went to my graduation and I got there on time. The gown covered up any traces that my clothes were below perfect, and I managed to keep up face that told my family and friends “I’m having the time of my life.” But behind it, all my questions about my dad still remained. I still questioned whether my mother was telling me the truth or if it was fiction that she perceived as real. She has done that in the past, but this was something I couldn’t just pass as fake, or at least at the time.
When my dad hugged me at the end of the graduation I realized something. It doesn’t really matter if he is my biological father or not. My father is the one who raised me and cared for me. My questions run simply for medical purposes now, but as far as who my dad is concerned, I already found him.