ElleSpeak

While sitting outside in our backyard on Chester Street and gazing at the moon one summer evening, my mother told me that my father had another daughter named Candi, who lived somewhere out West.

I was seven years old when Mom told me and we never spoke of Candi again until 40 years later when my father called my two brothers and me together to tell us he had something important he wanted us to know. He told us we had a sister and he wanted us to meet her. My brothers were really surprised, but I’d never forgotten the evening my mother told me about Candi.

During those forty years I sometimes gazed at the moon and wondered exactly where my sister lived out West, and what she might be like. My mother had told me that she was blonde like me, but I wondered what color her eyes were, and how tall she was. I always wanted to be six feet tall but never came close to that! Was she taller than me? Would we like each other? Did she have brothers or other sisters? Would we ever meet?

Candi’s mother’s name was Billye, and she was a pretty woman who loved a good time, but would never find true or lasting happiness, with or without a man. She was in and out of unhappy, unhealthy relationships, and for most of her younger years, Candi was reluctantly swept along in her mother’s roller coaster life.

The first six years of Candi’s life were spent living with her grandparents, who she loved very much. They were solid, loving, no nonsense people who held a strong faith in God. They made sure she knew she was loved, gave her what she needed in her young life, and every Sunday she went along to church with them. Those first six years gave Candi a strong inner core she would rely on for the rest of her life, but especially when she began living with her mother.

Billye was married again, living in Texas with her new husband, and she brought Candi, who was six years old at the time, to come and live with them. Candi attended school, but was frequently left at home alone after school and into the evening. She learned at a very early age how to take care of herself.

Billye’s unhappy, abusive marriage inevitably ended a few years later, while Candi was spending the summer with her grandparents in Vandervoort, Arkansas. Candi was quite surprised when she woke up one morning and looked out the window to find her mother and a U-Haul truck in her grandparents’ front yard.

While Billye’s husband was working nights, she had secretly packed all of her belongings and Candi’s, and hid the boxes in the spare room. One evening, right after he left for work, she loaded the truck and fled to Arkansas.

The same morning Candi awoke to find her mother in the front yard, Billye told her they were moving to Oklahoma City. Candi begged to stay in Arkansas with her grandparents, but Billye told her she had other family members and job opportunities in Oklahoma City, and that’s where they were going.

For a few years now, Candi had been asking her mother over and over again, who her Daddy was, and where he lived, and Billye had ignored her question again and again, until one day she finally answered by telling Candi that her father had been killed in the war. Candi didn’t believe it! She didn’t know how she knew, but she knew her mother was lying to her. She knew in her heart that her father was still alive, and she wondered if just maybe she had sisters or brothers too.

Years later, in 1992, Billye died, and Candi wondered for the thousandth time if she would ever meet her father. She found her birth certificate and saw her father’s name, Harry Hugar, and that he had been born in Altoona, Pennsylvania. Altoona…a place to start her search…whenever she found the courage to begin that journey.

In 1995 Candi was still living in Oklahoma City, and after the OKC bombing, she and her best friend Brenda visited the bombing site and were deeply moved; they mourned the loss of so many lives cut short by so much hatred.

Brenda turned to Candi and asked her, “How would you feel if you tried to find your Dad and were told that he had just died? If you’re ever going to find him you need to be figuring out how that’s going to happen. You never know what life is going to bring.”

They went straight home to Brenda’s house and Candi called her daughter Marti, who lived only a block away, and told her, “I’m going to try to find your Grandpa”.

Marti answered, “I’ll round up the boys and we’ll be right there.”

Candi wondered…If I do this…am I just opening an ugly can of worms? Is he really out there somewhere? Does he even know I exist? Will he acknowledge me as his daughter? Will he be excited to meet me or will he choose to have nothing to do with me? Can I live with the rejection if he isn’t interested in knowing me at all?

Finally, after years of imagining how this search might end, she mustered her courage and told Marti and Brenda she was ready. Marti, who was a take charge woman from the day she was born, called 411, “I’d like the phone number for Harry Hugar please. He lives in Altoona, PA.”

After a quiet moment, that must have seemed like an hour to Candi, the operator responded, “I don’t find a Harry Hugar in Altoona, but there is a Louis Hugar. Would you like that number?”

Marti answered, “Yes please. I’ll take that number.”