Growing up Poor
Writing about my childhood was difficult, but it was important that I set the stage for the kind of life that I decided to live. It’s hard for others to understand why I have ruthlessly pursued my dreams without some appreciation of my upbringing.
My real dad disappeared when I was 3 years old and I escaped from reality by creating a fantasy world where I was the center of the universe. Frequently, in those dreams, my dad swooped into my classroom and whisked me off to my favorite restaurant—Sizzler—before we spent the rest of our lives living the kind of happiness I only ever read about in books.
Although I experienced a lot of trauma as a child, it fostered a commitment to myself. As I grew older, I realized that I had to be the hero of my life’s story.
Finding my real dad, Alexs, was always the final scene in my imaginary life. Once that happened, everything would change. The beatings would stop, the yelling would stop. The pain would stop. I didn’t know what came after that moment, but its imagined reality kept me acting tough.
I only had two memories of him: hailing a taxi cab on the streets of Center City and the bunk beds we had at his apartment in West Philly. He and my mom split up when I was three, so I didn’t have any memories of what he looked like or how his voice sounded. I couldn’t remember him and my mom together, him holding me, or any of the normal things that fathers and sons do.
Not remembering helped me because it meant I could make up any story I wanted. I created idyllic scenes where my real dad was patiently explaining to me why clouds look like instruments and that snow is wintertime rain. Some days in the basement I imagined he was a superhero with a big “A” scrawled on his chest, busy saving the world, and would come back any day to rescue me. Or he was a brilliant scientist who was solving some crisis in a remote part of the world and just needed a few more days to keep millions of people from dying. No matter the fantasy, there was always a noble reason my dad left me to suffer at the hands of a monster.
My mom told me that he abandoned us but I never believed her. I knew that he was out there somewhere thinking about me and trying to find me. Every once in a while, I would screw up the courage to ask Aunt Theresa, my mom’s sister, about him. The only things she would tell me was that he from North Philly, studying at Temple University when my mom met him. I guess my mom was immediately attracted to him and he seduced her by eating out and going to college parties; he was her ticket to a better life.
That’s all I knew about my real dad: two memories that didn’t add up to anything interesting and some stories from my aunt that made him seem like a manipulative jerk. Meanwhile, my stepdad constantly told me that my dad wasn’t a real man because he abandoned his family. The one thing everyone agreed on was that I looked like him.