A Thousand Dads Before You

Summary

I had an obsessive, desperate compulsion: from the time I was small, I called everyone Dad.

When I was five, walking through a crowded flea market with the group-home director, I dropped to my knees, wrapped both arms around a strange man’s calf, and sobbed, "Daddy!" A suffocating crowd gathered within seconds. That man turned out to be a wanted child trafficker; my clingy, shameless scream was the only reason the police caught him before he slipped away.

When I was eight, a prospective adoptive mother came to the agency. She knelt, smiling softly, and asked me to call her Mom.