Which, as a child, always saw me coming up short for an explanation, especially when dealing with the relatives. See, most of the family didn’t know that he was dead. It was our little secret. My little secret.

“How’s your father?”

“Um…he’s in another country right now.” This was about as articulate and creative as I could get at age five.

At school it was a different story. I could tell them anything. I made up little fantasy adventures for my father, like Allan Quatermain or The Phantom. “My dad’s off in Africa fighting with the Zulu tribe against English slave-masters.” That sort of thing.

This all began when I once asked my mother where dad went. She could only look at me, gesturing with her hands as if reaching for an explanation, and finding none, simply stared at me with tears welling in her eyes before turning her back to me and going into the kitchen to microwave my dinner. Naturally I assumed he was dead. When my mother told me to tell relatives, if they asked, that my father was away on business in Singapore or Berlin or wherever, I thought it was because they didn’t know, and Mom was just trying to spare everybody’s feelings. But I’d figured it out. I was on to her. But I couldn’t let her know.

It took me awhile to adjust to this. I knew something was wrong, but I couldn’t figure it out, exactly. Everyone else I knew had a father. I was mired in this equation, short of a single, fundamental variable. It was incredibly frustrating.

So it comes as no real surprise that the first memory I have of the man is abject terror.

All I knew was, we, that is my mother and I, were at the airport picking up the old man. I remember being very anxious. How could this be? Didn’t he die, or something?

I looked around the baggage claim at the perpetually abuzz O’Hare International airport in Chicago, wondering exactly who it was I was looking for.

I looked back at Mom for some help, here. I’ve got nothing to go on—what am I doing? Give us a clue, for old times’ sake? I would try this every five minutes or so, despite my mother’s apparent disinterest.

So when I turned away and immediately saw a huge, mustachioed visage drop suddenly and fully into my field of vision, I was fairly sure that I was going to or had already shit my heart, lungs, and small intestine down the left leg of my pants in shock.

“Who the hell are you?” I would have shouted, if indeed I’d been able to make my mouth function, and my five-year old No-Profanity-In-Front-Of-The-Mommy Reflex hadn’t added an extra layer of careful vocal security around my already paralyzed larynx.

I thought I was about to be abducted. All those commercials with McGruff, the talking cartoon police dog never in a million years prepared me for this. I was terrified. It was all over. And mom was in on it.