THE TWO OF US

Most of us believe that love has everything to do with two people, and only two people.

However, could your love for someone be the source of your love for someone else — even if that someone else is a person you would otherwise not care for at all?

I have a six-year-old granddaughter named Alice whose extracurricular activity of choice is Ninja Warriors. It’s a sport that includes mostly boys, but maybe a quarter of her group is girls, and among those girls Alice is the youngest. It is no surprise then that a closeness has developed between Alice and the girl closest to her in age; a girl named Patricia.

At the converted warehouse where Ninja Warriors is held a long counter separates parents (grand and otherwise) from the children and the apparatus on which they exercise. Before instruction begins kids tumble and pair off in a random display of personal choice and undisciplined energy.

It is always then that Alice and Patricia find each other.

Recently, I stood on my side of that counter next to a stranger of about my own age. He could tell from where my gaze landed that Alice was mine. He remarked, “Close, aren’t they?”

I nodded yes and then pointed toward Patricia, “She your granddaughter?” I asked.

“No,” he smiled, “She’s my daughter.”

I’m in my seventies so I didn’t know exactly how to receive that remark. Did I falsely assume he was near my own age when, in fact, he was far from it. And if he was far from it, then how old must I look?

He saw my tumblers spin and guessed at the truth. With a smile he endeavored to end my confusion, “I married late,” he said, “and to a much younger woman.”

“Lucky you!” I smiled back.

“Well, not entirely, and there’s a story to tell.”

I could have processed that invitation to dwell in his backyard as many others would have, simply staring straight ahead and ignoring the offer. Instead, I turned toward him to indicate that the ball was now in his court.

“That marriage to a much younger woman did not work,” he admitted with a sense of chagrin.

“Who knows what she needed… or even what I was thinking. We tried, but the gap was just too wide. Eventually we divorced and soon she remarried a younger guy, giving me a reason to resent that younger guy, and one more reason to resent her. Short as it was, Patricia came from that ill-fated marriage. I remained involved as a father, even if my anger got in the way of being the kind of father I wanted to be… the kind of father she deserved.”

I was surprised by his frank description of a personal failure to a total stranger. That degree of candor can be unsettling, especially among men. I looked for a way to defer the seriousness of it all… maybe coax the conversation in a different direction. I looked back toward our kids and said, “Well, here you are now. That relationship looks pretty good to me.”

“But that’s where the real story begins,” he said.

I had the sense that this story wasn’t about to be deferred. A pause in our conversation lasted just a few beats, then I looked in his direction and said, “So?”

“Well — so — almost exactly two years ago today I was visiting clients several miles away from my ex’s home. Then I got a call from Patricia’s school telling me that her mom hadn’t shown up and Patricia needed a ride. Would I please come and pick up my daughter?”

He elevated his hands in a gesture of exasperation recalling his mood of a year ago. “I was always ready to find fault with my ex, and this was one more perfect opportunity. I called her and the phone just rang and rang… no answer. I quickly cancelled my appointments and sped off in the direction of school with a gathering sense of anger. When I picked up Patricia my impatience was obvious, and I repeated the cause for my impatience — at length — as we covered the distance to her home.”

“Unpleasant,” I said.

“Oh, you have no idea how unpleasant I was. When we pulled up to the house Patricia bolted from the car and beat me to the front door. I walked behind her to the landing, but by then Patricia was already at the top of the stairs; standing there unmoving and stiff. As I pulled even, I realized why.”

“Her mother was lying there on the floor, face up, eyes open and obviously dead. The very woman I had been insulting for the last fifteen minutes. The very woman Patricia loved more than anyone else in the world. And at that moment the ‘anyone else’ included me. Her mother was both there and utterly gone, the victim of a massive stroke.”

He looked pained with a moment that tortured any hope of him being good, or even being forgivable.

I wondered where a person goes after such an event. It must have felt like a catastrophic slip without even a hard floor to break the fall — just a void of diminishing significance. How do you explain yourself in a moment like that? Where do you find recovery?

I summed all that up with, “Where in the world did you go from there?”

“Oddly,” he said, “my salvation was continued disaster. In that moment the girl standing next to me was no longer someone else’s primary responsibility. She had become mine, whole and entire. She had a stepfather, sure, and later I discovered, a stepfather who loved her as much as anyone could love a daughter. But legally, morally, and by my own first choice Patricia was mine to care for.”

“Then, barely a week later, my own father also had a stroke, and instantly he became someone who couldn’t care for himself. So me, a person zooming past seventy and with every desire to work forever, found himself in a role of full time domestic care.”

“Where does the salvation come in?” I asked.

“Well, that’s a question that has two answers. In the short run I was so buried with my changed circumstances that I had no time to ruminate about my mistakes. I was madly rowing for shore and trying to compensate for this big hole in the bottom of my boat. The last thing on my mind was how that hole had gotten there in the first place.”

We both smiled at the slight touch of humor. “And the second answer?” I asked.

“The second answer is the person who made my impossible circumstance possible.”

“Who was?”

“The last person I could have guessed. The man who ran away with my ex-wife’s affections and left me feeling old, jealous, and ridiculous… the guy who’s also Patricia’s stepfather. I didn’t even think about him dealing with the loss of his wife, or him missing his stepdaughter. But his grief was big enough to let him forget how my grief was so small, angry and resentful. Out of the blue he picked up the phone and asked if he might spend time with Patricia… maybe for a Saturday afternoon.”

“That was a surprise?” I interjected.

“Yes, I’m now embarrassed to say it was. A bigger man might have been able to imagine the truth, but I’m not that bigger man. I could, and should have seen it in Patricia herself, because, God knows, she missed him too. But she knew my feelings about her stepfather and didn’t want to test my ability to understand.”

“How did you respond?”

Well, at that moment everything that could go wrong, was terribly wrong, except for one thing.

“Which was?”

“His timing. I was lost in a swarm of obligations I couldn’t handle. I was in no position to reject any offer of understanding or help, and, oddly enough, the one person in the world best suited to provide those things was the one person I was least prepared to like.”

“Remember that hole in the bottom of my boat? Well, he was the plug. Oddly, I came to realize that it wasn’t just Patricia who needed him, it was me too. Who else understood as well as he did what I had lost. Who else understood as well as I did how much I loved Patricia?”

“No one. Not a soul.”

“Now every Friday night he picks up Patricia here, and she’s his for the weekend. If there’s a school event we go together, if it’s Girl Scouts we go together. Whenever our unlikely trio arrives at a birthday party, or for Trick or Treating, she’ll introduce us as ‘her fathers,’ making us an unlikely poster family for gay people.”

Both of us found humor in that odd turn of events, “You know,” he said, “I wound up losing my wife, even my career, but out of all that loss I got a daughter in the fullest possible sense, and a friend I’ve come to love in a way unlike any other friend I’ve ever had.”

He pointed in the direction of Patricia — still gabbing with Alice and oblivious to the two of us.

“And all of that loving” he assured me, “was possible only because that little girl loved the two of us.”