Family Resemblance

[Note: This is my belated Father's Day post. Intentionally belated, because it's not really the sort of thing one should post on Father's Day.]

"You look like you're Ukrainian," said the lady at the cosmetic counter.

I had been hoping that no one would notice the dutiful henpecked husband waiting for his wife. Apparently, my attempt at invisibility had failed. "No, he's not Ukrainian," my wife answered without looking up. "He's just a mutt."

But as I stood there, attempting once again to fade into the background, I considered the prospect: Maybe I am Ukrainian.

It's possible. The truth is that I don't know what I am. The reason is because I don't know my father. And not just in the existential sense ("I don't even know who you are sometimes...") but rather in the ontological sense ("I don't know the name of the male being that was present at my conception.")

When I was a boy I thought I knew the name of that male being, my father. My mother had told me it was a Vietnam veteran, a Green Beret with the last name of "Love" (which I found ironic, cheesy, and totally cool). But by the time I met Sgt. Love he was a shell of his former self. He had lost half his right arm to shrapnel and used his left arm only to open cans of Budweiser. The few times I saw him he was always half-drunk, either on beer or self-pity. He also had a tendency to ramble, which was how I discovered were weren't related. At the age of fourteen I found a cassette tape he had sent my mom from Vietnam in which he mentioned that he'd "love me like his own son" and hoped to adopt me someday. The tape was dated 1971. I was born in 1969.

For twenty years I never broached the subject with my mother. It was only when she was nearing death that I asked her to tell me the truth, to tell me the name of my dad. She said she didn't know.

Because of her answer, there is much I don't know either: I don't know how to answer 50% of my medical history forms; I don't know if I have more brothers and sisters; I don't know what my last name should be (Carter is the surname of my brother's father.); I don't know if I'm half-Jewish, half-German, or half-Ukrainian.

Mostly, I don't know my back-story. If my life were a book, the prologue would be missing several pages; it would be missing half my genealogy. It would be missing the "begats."

When reading the Bible, people often skip the genealogies ("Abraham begat Isaac; and Isaac begat Jacob..."). However, my own history has given me a new appreciation for those passages, particularly the genealogies of Christ. In modern America we fail to appreciate the significance of our forebears. We Radical Individualists enter the world fully formed, having no need of history. Yet it was not always so. Ancestry was important to both the people of the Ancient Near East and to the Jews of Jesus day for it told people what kind of person you were. (Proverbs 22:1)

I appreciate this connection with the past and take comfort from that fact that Jesus' own genealogy was traced through his adopted father (Matthew 1:16). Just as Jesus' ancestry was traced through a physical lineage, my back-story--the one that truly matters---is traceable through my spiritual genealogy ("...you have received the Spirit of adoption as sons, by whom we cry, "Abba! Father!" - Romans 8:15).

My hope is that someday I'll grow up to be like My Father. People will know what kind of person I am from seeing the family resemblance. Perhaps then instead of seeing me and thinking "Urkranian" they'll say, "You look like you're Christian."

Addendum: Sharing such details about my life is too close to navel-gazing for my taste. And I would be horrified if anyone thought my situation were worthy of pity. So let me clarify that lacking an earthly father was only a minor frustration in an obscenely blessed life. I can't complain about anything for I've quite literally lived one of the cushiest lives in human existence.