Surreal

This weekend I will be embarking on one of the most surreal trips of my life. I actually started having the feeling of being in a dream at the beginning of this week, and it persists. I am going to meet my real father for the first time since I was 3 or 4, not sure which since everyone is always so sketchy with the actual details. Some say 3, some say 4. At this point I only mention it to drive home the fact that for at least 32 years I didn't actually even know what he looked like. I had no contact with him whatsoever for at least 32 years. A couple of years ago we started writing each other and emailing, and he did send me some pictures. Seeing those pictures led to another moment of surreality, if that is a word, where I was certain I already knew that is what he would look like, but at the same time I knew there was no way I could know that. I don't have any memories of him at all. The only picture I ever saw, before those he sent me, was a very blurry picture taken at what looked to be Thanksgiving or Christmas when he and my mother looked very young. You know the kind of picture where the whole family stands together and someone, (who is never in any pictures because they are always the picture takers), takes the worst photo ever with heads cut off across the top and people barely in the shots at all. That is it, and I only saw that photo a couple of times before it disappeared, so a hazy pseudo memory is all I ever had until recently.

I haven't actually sorted out all of my feelings about meeting him in person. Maybe that kind of thing is like a closure to a chapter and then a new chapter begins after the meeting. I have liked talking to him, a very recent occurrence, on the telephone. I liked getting the pictures when he sent them, too. I know who my sister looks like. After talking to him and writing, I know where I get my willful tendencies and my very direct manner. I have, as has my younger sister, always been told we have mannerisms that are just like his. Strange that DNA codes us with a certain way of talking, standing, or walking. Has to be DNA as I wasn't with him long enough as a child to have learned any of his behavior.

I was adopted by my mother's second husband when I was 4 and to me he will always be my Daddy. He passed away in 2000 after a prolonged illness, and I am not sure that I would have gone through with this journey if that hadn't been the case. Something about loyalty and feeling a sense of obligation to him would have probably held me back, but I have reconciled those feelings and I think I am ready for the trip. We shall see.

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I love surreal artwork and I wanted to show you this great Etsy shop full of full bodied collage pieces. Each of them telling stories in a really surreal and disjointed way. Dreamy and earthbound all at once. For now, Invisible Maps offers art and bookmarks. They are worth checking out and studying. Finding parallel journeys in the art work of the proprietor set my mind to this bit of writing today. This piece , titled "And We Find Our Heroes reprise...past, present, future", speaks to me today, but I will leave it to you to get lost in your own journey at Invisible Maps.