When I was 11, my dad chose his girlfriend over my five-year-old brother Jamie and me.<\/p>\n
Our mother had already died, and instead of fighting to keep us, Dad let us enter foster care.<\/p>\n
Fifteen years later, he showed up at my front door.<\/p>\n
His girlfriend had left him, taken almost everything, and now he had nowhere to go.<\/p>\n
\u201cI just need help,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
I agreed\u2014but on one condition.<\/p>\n
First, I took him to our old neighbor, Mrs. Parker.<\/p>\n
She had saved our childhood belongings and, more importantly, letters proving she had repeatedly tried to help Dad find us.<\/p>\n
He had ignored her.<\/p>\n
For years, part of me wondered if he had tried to get us back.<\/p>\n
Now I knew he hadn\u2019t.<\/p>\n
Still, I bought him food and clothes and paid for one week in a rooming house.<\/p>\n
\u201cI thought I could stay with you,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cNo.\u201d<\/p>\n
Jamie still didn\u2019t trust him, and I wouldn\u2019t force him to share his home with the man who abandoned us.<\/p>\n
Weeks later, Dad found work.<\/p>\n
Then he asked to attend one of Jamie\u2019s baseball games.<\/p>\n
He sat alone and quietly watched.<\/p>\n
Afterward, Jamie tossed him the game ball.<\/p>\n
\u201cShortstop,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Dad looked confused.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s what I play.\u201d<\/p>\n
It wasn\u2019t forgiveness.<\/p>\n
But for the first time in 15 years, Dad finally knew something about his son.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
When I was 11, my dad chose his girlfriend over my five-year-old brother Jamie and me. Our mother had already died, and instead of fighting to keep us, Dad let us enter foster care. Fifteen years later, he showed up at my front door. His girlfriend had left him, taken almost everything, and now he …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":9873,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9872","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9872","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9872"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9872\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9874,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9872\/revisions\/9874"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/9873"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9872"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9872"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9872"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}