<\/div>\n
<\/ins><\/div>\n
According to the story he told me my entire life, he was coming \u00a0home<\/span> after a late shift when he noticed something strange outside his house.<\/p>\nPlan Gardens<\/div>\n
His old bicycle was leaning against the fence.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
<\/ins><\/div>\n
And inside the front basket was a baby.<\/p>\n
Me.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe\u2019s yours. I can\u2019t do this.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\nThat was the last time my dad heard from the woman who gave birth to me.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
<\/ins><\/div>\n
At least, that was what I believed for eighteen years.<\/p>\n
He Was Only 17 When He Became My Dad<\/h2>\n
My father had not even known my mother was pregnant.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
<\/ins><\/div>\n
One night, he was a teenager thinking about graduation and his future. The next morning, he was responsible for a three-month-old baby.<\/p>\n
Most seventeen-year-olds would have been terrified.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
<\/ins><\/div>\n
He was too.<\/p>\n
But he stayed.<\/p>\n
The following morning, Dad attended his graduation ceremony carrying his cap and gown in one hand and me in the other.<\/p>\n
We still have a photograph from that day hanging in our living room.<\/p>\n
In it, he looks impossibly young.<\/p>\n
His graduation cap sits slightly crooked on his head, and he is holding me carefully against his chest as if I might break if he breathes too hard.<\/p>\n
Whenever I looked at that photograph as a child, I saw my dad.<\/p>\n
As I got older, I started seeing something else.<\/p>\n
I saw a scared seventeen-year-old boy who had every reason to walk away.<\/p>\n
But he didn\u2019t.<\/p>\n
He Gave Up Everything to Raise Me<\/h2>\n
Dad never went to college.<\/p>\n
Instead, he worked construction during the day and delivered pizza at night.<\/p>\n
Money was often tight, although he tried to make sure I never noticed.<\/p>\n
\n
He packed my school lunches, helped me with homework, attended parent-teacher meetings, and sat in the front row at every school performance.<\/p>\n
When I was little, he even taught himself how to braid hair by watching videos online.<\/p>\n
His first attempts were terrible.<\/p>\n
I went to school with crooked braids more than once.<\/p>\n
But eventually, he became pretty good at it.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
<\/ins><\/div>\n
Most importantly, Dad never made me feel abandoned.<\/p>\n
I knew my mother had left, but I never grew up believing that I was unwanted.<\/p>\n
Dad made sure of that.<\/p>\n
For me, he was always enoug<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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