From Dispassionate to Wonder: A Son's Adventure

Get up, get to work, get home.

Do it again the next day, and the day after that, and just when you thought something new would happen, you do the same thing you did yesterday.

Over and over to the point where you stop expecting, stop dreaming, stop hoping.

I am Jay Cole, 30 year old, business man, who has learnt to accept that nothing has changed, even if you want it to, the scraps you get, is the scraps you will always have to deal with.

Or so I thought...

"Jay, come home, please!", my mom yells, "Christmas is a time to spend with your family".

Only, I don't have one, as the only child of a single mom, Christmas time is just like every other - boring. No jingle bells, no family meal, only the two of us.

Or so I thought...

My mom continued to plead and plead till I simply couldn't take it anymore, so I went over to visit her in our "family" home in Oklahoma. And that home looked even more old and miserable than me, yet her only excuse was because she'd been too tired and I also didn't care enough to bother. However, the cob webs and mice refused to permit me to sleep, the squeaky doors and moulded floors were both exasperating and maddening, provoking me to clean up the house or at least try!

I got the gloves, the mask and the cleaning products I could find and began to clean, I scraped and pressed and scrubbed - not like I had anything better to do.

But.

When I got to the corridor outside of my mother's room, I stumbled on a crack in the wall with an even tinier piece of paper stuck in it which was even more infuriating. I used the wet towel to scrap and try to scrub it out, yet this tiny piece of paper only got dampened and so I decided to use my fat, middle aged fingers to pick it out, but as I grabbed a hold of it, and pulled it out, I only realized more was stuck inside. This peaked my curiosity, so I held onto the dampened paper and pinched it out and there I was.

It happened so quick, yet my eyes refused to move away from the photograph that was there before me, there in my now shivering hands. It was a photo of me, my mom and a man whose hands were interlocked with mine and whose eyes widened, smile enlarged, gazing at young me.

Who was he?

What made me to smile the way I had?

It was a photo yet I could see pure and great joy in me and mom and this stranger, a joy I never knew I was capable of expressing. I had to find out who he was, where I was.

I ran downstairs to meet my mom who was sipping away at a cup of tea, and as I rolled up the photo before her, the fright that overwhelmed her demeanour was an even greater surprise to me, like a veil that made me even more thirsty for an answer. I asked her who he was, although an even greater question was why was it hidden in the wall, yet she gave me not a word. This enraged me, setting off a flame on my inside that turned my curiosity into an drape of anger, clouding my vision and my ability to think. Consequently, things went flying from vases to the books, the answer to my question came bubbling, "He must be my father!!". I was at my breaking point and so was my mother who replied, "Yes- he was".

I was seized by anger, confusion, frustration and guilt.

He "was" my father, so is he no more? Did he walk away from me? Was I not enough for him? Why?

And so, when I saw that my mother would not respond, I left without a word, only a photograph, making up in my mind not to return until I got my answers. On the back of the photo, was written, "San Antonio 1969" and so to San Antonio I left.

I arrive at a small town by the beach, a big billboard saying San Antonio, and as I read those words, I knew this is where I was meant to be. Yet, upon entry into the town, there was a greater mystery about to unfold.

The people there were loud, obnoxious and blatantly bold, they were happy, they were jovial yet how could they say I was not welcome there. I had told them the quest that was heavy on my heart, I showed them the photograph of the man I was searching for, even gave them my name, but what was their response? Trials.

I was not permitted to speak to the man in the photograph until I completed a series of trials. What could be worse than living a lie? What could be worse than living a life empty of a joy I so innocently used to enjoy?

But if it was a trial I had to do to get the answer, trials I would face and overcome.

However, my time in trials turned out to be the most beautiful moments of my life. These people were so passionate, so welcoming, it felt like a "family". I lived with a group of other young men , strong and vibrant and equally passionate and beautiful women. I simply had to learn how to live like them and that I did, things were going great.

Until the campfire.

They told me this would be my greatest trial and that it was. We sat around the fire, and one of the people there asked me, "Who are you and what is your goal in life?", and I was shocked because over the past month I have spent with these people, they only now ask me this question. Yet I don't think there was a better time for me to have been asked this question.

The pain, the frustration, the dissatisfaction and the confusion I had bottled inside of me began to bellow out of me in deep cries of anguish. I couldn't answer the question, I didn't know who I was and so in desperation and embarrassment, I stormed off, to the seaside on the beach.

I sat there in my misery and the warmness of the evening turned into a cold and lonely night.

I began to throw rocks onto the sea when suddenly and yet so calmly, a man walked up to me. He asked what I was doing and involuntarily I responded, "I'm trying to see how far I can throw these rocks into the sea.", I began to pour out how I had felt like those rocks, "floating and being thrown further and further into the world, purposeless and unknown".

Then he called out my name, "Son, welcome home".