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Personal Testimonies
As a child, I always took it for granted that I looked more like my mother than my father, and that my younger sister was the one who took after Dad.
I was forever wanting to look at my baby book. My mother always liked to say that she didn't feel like "digging it out" (though I knew where it was). Years later I would realize why.
Under Father's Name in the book, it looked like there was some writing that had been blacked out with a permanent marker. Dad's name was written above it. Then there were places where Mom had written notes and referred to Dad as "step-father" with "step" blacked out. My newborn bracelet had my mother's maiden name, Holland, instead of my dad's name, Peach.
My dad and I hardly got along sometimes. One day, shortly before my twenty-first birthday, I was in the middle of a week-long visit with my parents while my husband of one year was working, and I flat-out asked him if he was really my father or not, for since my teen years I'd had my suspicions. One thing that prompted it was that I had to know who my real father was so I wouldn't wind up having a crush on a half-brother or something!
He went to the bathroom, and when he came out, he said, "I'm not your father." Then I asked who was.
I know who he is now. I visited his parents--yes, I got up the nerve!--and apparently they wanted little if anything to do with me. My birth father wanted nothing to do with me. I came to realize, though, that my dad was the man who had raised me. My dad had known my mother's family since the age of twelve--his parents had thrown him out, and my mother's brother had brought him home--and they met up again when I was only a month old. My mother tells me that when Dad saw me, he said he wanted to be my dad!
They were married when I was three months old. A year later my younger sister was born, and when I was two years old, my dad's adoption of me was official, and I was officially Alexandra Peach, instead of Alexandra Holland. Another reason Dad adopted me was so I wouldn't go to school with a different last name and be made fun of (of course they had no way of knowing that by the time I was in school, from 1977-1991, a child having a different last name from his/her mother would seem to be a trend).
It was Dad who came to my high school graduation in 1991. It was Dad who walked me down the aisle in 1993. It was Dad who was more than happy to help me with issues with whatever car I had. It was Dad who helped me get a couple of the cars I've owned. It wasn't the man my mother still refers to as "the sperm donor."
I'm happy to be able to say that the last few years of his life we got along better. My husband and I were with him when he died on July 23, 2000, only two months after his and my mother's 27th wedding anniversary. I was the one who called 911 when he collapsed.
I just wish he were here to see his little grandson, Tyler, who was born December 16, 2001. I have a tape of my dad, and when Tyler's old enough, he'll get to see what his Grandpa Bob was like. It's on the same tape as the video of Tyler minutes after his birth.
Robert Peach was my father, but it wasn't by blood. He loved me like a father would.
© Copyright 2002-2008 by LAF/BeautifulWomanhood.org
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