My Bio-Dad Was a Runner

When I was younger I came down heavily on the nurture side of the nature vs. nurture debate. Now that I'm older I'm the opposite. Back then I would have said of course nature and nurture both play a role, but nurture is king and nature is secondary. Today I would say the opposite. Some of this switch is due to reading about scientific studies also seeking to solve the debate but most of it is my own lived experience. What does this have to do with fathers and more specifically my bio-dad? Well read on.

First some history: my bio-dad Leo and my mom got a divorce in 1973 when I was 3 years old. I have plenty of memories of him both before and after the divorce - some good, some bad. Some of the good ones when I look back at them with adult eyes are actually quite bad, but hey 5 year old me had a blast. Sometime in '79 or so my bio-dad moved to Costa Rica suddenly. At the time I didn't care too much since I wasn't seeing all that much of him at the time and the last few visits we'd had had been rather traumatizing. (Topics ripe for a different essay!)

In Costa Rica he met a local woman and married her fathering two more children - my half-sister and half-brother. Sometime in the 80s they all moved to West Berlin and then eventually back to the States. I saw him once or twice in the 80s then in the early 90s when my grandmother, his mother, died - but for the most part had no real contact with him. I didn't really discuss him much with my mom or siblings back then either. I was busy growing up and bonding/fighting/bonding/fighting/bonding with my step-dad who is my actual dad in every way BUT genetics.

I knew very little of my bio-dad's life after he cut out in the late 70s - and my understanding of what went on before that was through the eyes of a child. I never viewed his sudden departure to Costa Rica as an example of his running back then even though it obviously was. In that instance he had a very good reason to run. The DEA was after him for selling coke and weed from his house across from Northgate Mall. Lucky for him some of his best customers at the time were local cops who tipped him off that the DEA was sniffing around. 

Flash forward to 2013. I was playing around with a people finder web page doing searches for people I'd lost contact with. I did a search for my bio-dad and noticed that my half-sister* was listed as being a connection to him. One site listed my half-sister's married name. I searched for her with her married name and she popped right up on Facebook. A few messages and a friend request later and we were connected. She lives in Richmond, VA. A business trip to DC was the perfect opportunity to drive down to Richmond and meet her and her family. 

One of the first things we did was fill each other in with as many stories as we could remember about our shared dad. I knew many from the 70s and before and she knew many from the 80s to the present. One of the things I learned from her was that my bio-dad was a runner. Several times in her life he picked up and ran off from her and her mother. They all wound up in Berlin because my bio-dad ran away there by himself. My half-sister and her pregnant with my half-brother mom followed him there against his wishes. I had never known how they wound up in Berlin. Sure I knew he had problems and wasn't a good dad, but I never knew he was a runner.

What does this have to do with nature vs. nurture? Well I too am a runner. Several times when my relationship has hit the rocks my impulse was to run off and that's just what I did. I quit my job, climbed into my car, and hit the road. I've done it a few times. Do I regret it? Yes and no. I regret the anguish and upset it has caused my husband, but I don't regret the peace and clarity it has brought me. I'm not saying it's a viable solution to life's problems - I'm just saying it's what I did in the moment without much thought or hesitation. Where did this impulse come from? I cannot say that it was something I learned from my bio-dad - I never really knew he was a runner until after I'd run off a few times myself. It was only when my half-sister filled me in on his life after he moved to Costa Rica that I realized my own running had some sort of genetic tie-in. I didn't learn by watching my bio-dad run but somehow still wound up running nonetheless. 

Furthermore, my older brother is a runner. He's disappeared and wound up across the country a few times in his life when marital trouble hit. Looking back on what I know of my paternal grandfather's life it's obvious that he too was a runner. Something on that Y chromosome makes us Dent boys hit the road when the going gets tough at home. I can see the evolutionary benefit to it. Men who run off are likely to father children far and wide as both my dad and grandfather did. It's perhaps not something to be proud of, but I wonder if either of my two boys will wind up unexpectedly on the other side of the country someday? If they do, they'll have come by it naturally. 

*Please note I refer to my sister-from-another-mother in this essay as my half-sister since genetically she is, but I only do that so as not to confuse her with any of my other sisters (full and step). Since reconnecting in 2013 we've become quite close and there is nothing half about our relationship. She's my sister and I love her as such!