Merry Christmas. This morning I went to a matinee of the film Big Fish. Tim Burton is one of my favorite directors and the subject matter (tall tales) combined with a story of a 30-something son trying to reconcile with his dying father spoke to me. My father died suddenly on June 28th this year. I never got to say goodbye. There wasn't even a funeral or memorial service because Dad didn't want either. My body felt nervous and figidy during parts of the film. Although the nervousness was never physically realized, it seemed so visceral. I was surprised that my body was not shivering and shaking. On the inside, I felt as if my nervous system had been thrown into overdrive. The very thought of it stirs the same jittery feeling inside.

My father and I were never close...NEVER. He and my mother were very young (18 and 16, respectively) when I was born. They were seperated and divorced within two years. Dad hitchhiked to California with my Uncle Darryl AKA Bingo. It was the most adventurous experience that Dad would ever have. On their first day on the road, Dad and Uncle Bingo met a kind soul that drove them several miles west of their oppressive lives in Peoria. The amiable stranger dropped them off with 5 marijuana joints and hope. They didn't have a final destination in mind. They just knew that when they got to the Pacific Ocean they had to stop. Dad couldn't swim.

No one on my mother's side of the family ever spoke of Dad to me. I once found a high school yearbook that belonged to Mom. It was aqua marine in color and had gold or maybe silver letters on the front. I opened it and quickly went to the index to find the name "Albert B. Lilly, Jr." He was listed on two pages. On one page was a smiling face much like mine. It was Dad's senior picture. His other picture was a group picture. It seems that Dad had been a member of the cross-country team. Although I was only 10 or 11, the irony was not lost on me. Here I was in Peoria and Dad was 1000s of miles away.

It was about this time in my life that my Aunt Sharon, my mother's older sister intervened on my behalf. She thought I should spend time with my paternal extended family. One December in the late 70s, I was out with my aunt when she pointed out a middle-aged women with two mulatto children. The woman was my grandmother Lilly and the mulatto children were my twin half brothers, Albert and Alan. Aunt Sharon arranged for Uncle Gerald AKA Big Gerald (my father's older brother) to take me to visit Grandma Lilly. Grandma Lilly lived in the Taft Homes, unit 55. The Taft Homes was a housing project that still stands on the near north side of Peoria. The Lilly family was one of the first family to move into the Taft Homes when they opened in the 50s. Grandfather Lilly was a musician. Grandma Lilly was a librarian and the kindest person you would ever want to meet. They also had 12 children (tres catholique).

I remember being very scared to visit my grandmother. I was partially scared because I was going to the projects. I was a hardly what you call a "tough kid." I was mostly scared because I didn't know any of these people though they were biologically connected to me as equally as my mother's family that I had known my whole short life. When I entered Grandma Lilly's unit the first thing that I saw was a wall of 8 x 10 photos. They were graduation photos of each of my grandmother's children (except DeeDee, who was still in high school). Right in the middle of the wall was a smiling face that looked like mine. It was a larger version of the photo I had seen in Mom's yearbook and it was in color. It was Dad.

Dad would stay in California for the next 10 years. He made the occassional trip to Peoria for brief visits with contentious family members. I never saw him in those 10 years. One day, I heard a rumor that Dad was back in Peoria. I was 12 years old. I don't remember how it happened but I do remember a day when I walked into Grandma Lilly's home to find the smiling man from the picture sitting on the arm of the sofa. He was smiling and he said, "I'm the man you came to see."

to be continued...