When Daddy Died

Jason Remington was not my father, but he was my Dad

That round-eyed kid with the big, square head? Me on my Dad’s lap and out back with a dog I don’t remember and a cat I do.

I was told when I was eight years old that Daddy wasn’t my “real” Daddy.

Bullshit.

To this day I still don’t know with any certainty who my “real” father was and I don’t care. The only father I ever knew was Jason Elwood Remington, Jr. and he was my Daddy.

Families have stories.

Some may be true and others are what the tellers want to be true. Was Jason a close friend to the man my mother married when she was 20 after her true love died in a motorcycle accident? Did my mother really not conceive any children for the first five years of that marriage only to have it end ugly when I was a year old?

She did marry Jason Remington. I was not invited to the wedding, a small affair with no bride in white or tossed bouquets. She went on to bear Jason three more daughters. He never got over not having a son.

My mother was beautiful. Like, movie-star beautiful.

And Jason, well, you can see for yourself that he was kind of a smallish man, not great looking and, worse, he couldn’t enlist in World War II because of some foot defect. He was never comfortable in his home, in his marriage, in his manhood, in his skin…