My new father shows up at the park with a withered sunflower.
“It’s all I could afford at the flower shop,” he apologizes.
It’s not a promising start. He obviously sat on it accidentally, too.
“Did you even read my profile?” I demand.
“You like long walks. And scenic drives. And flowers,” he adds, proud of himself for remembering all these things. “We can go anywhere, drive anywhere you want.”
His car is parked across the street. A gray Ford with cord wrapped around the bumper and a plastic bag taped to a broken window because he ‘hasn’t gotten around to fixing it since the crash.’
I imagine us swerving around a semi, tires squealing over the edge, car junk littering the coast line.
I’m not going on any long drives in that car, least of all down Highway 1.
He holds up his hands.
“Hey, that’s fine.”
It isn’t fine, not at all. He walks away, throwing the sunflower into a garbage can.
I don’t want to care, but I’ve been alone ever since my last father choked on a chicken bone at KFC and died in the restaurant.
If they can call it a restaurant.
But there’s a nickname for people like me on Adopt-a-Parent.
Snifflers.
I’ve seen their scarring profiles. The mournful poses. The bad poetry. They take up crochet and listen to indie bands.
No one wants a Sniffler.
They’re chronically sad, and lethargic, and basically doomed to be alone.
According to my profile, I’m supposed to be healing. Taking charge of my life again.
I speak with exclamation marks! I greet the day with a smile! I sing in my car! I do goat yoga! Because I live life to the fullest! Every day! I am super fun and positive!
My new father and I drive to the beach. We do not die. Not then, anyway.
We walk in silence down the boardwalk and stare at seagulls and joggers and surfers. It isn’t relaxing like it’s supposed to be and the silence is awkward and none of us knows what to say.
Maybe it will get better in time.
Depending on how much time we have.
“How about a Matcha Latte!” I exclaim.
My new father doesn’t understand the concept of whip cream.
“And why is it green? What’s wrong with plain old black coffee?” he grumbles. “What’s wrong with people these days?”
I don’t know where to begin. So that’s at least one thing we have in common.
My new father looks at me like he sees through my charade. “Are you angry all the time, too?”
I’ve been angry all the time for a long time. But if this is a test, I don’t intend to fail.
Besides, the membership is expensive and I already work two jobs.
I won’t make the same mistake I made with my second father.
The neediness, the crying. The snotty kind.
I was in a bad place back then.
“Clean yourself up,” he had reprimanded. He was looking for someone to watch the game with, someone to go fishing with, this wasn’t what he ordered. Even though I rattled off stuff like ‘tackle’ and ‘bait’ to impress him, terms I had read up on the internet.
It didn’t work. He left me a two star rating.
It’s taken me a while to recover my reputation.
I’ve been through a lot of fathers and none come close to the original. But if I’m not careful, I’ll start to sound like a Sniffler.
My new father invites me over for a home cooked meal.
His wife, Brenda, watches a lot of the food network and cooks dishes with old world names like ‘casserole’ and ‘meatloaf’.
“It’s delicious,” I lie.
Their house is something out of a sixties sitcom; floral wallpaper, pink carpeting, and shelves jammed with plates “from our wedding”. There are random pieces of furniture everywhere. They’d take me on a tour, but they “haven’t gotten around to organizing”.
Wedged in-between all the stuff, there’s a framed photo of them next to a little boy in overalls.
“Our son Walter,” my new father explains.
I don’t ask what happened to him. I’ve heard enough sad stories.
Adopt-a-Parent holds a circle every month. They check in on our progress. They give us a ‘sharing space’ to talk about our feelings and complain, but mostly they want testimonials.
I never have anything to say, but still I show up because the food is catered from my favorite Indian-Vietnamese-Jamaican-fusion restaurant.