My good friend Teresa thinks that Facebook has the potential to be a great healing force for the collective consiousness. She says that society is reconnecting the threads to each other which ends up patching up lots of little holes in this giant quilt of humanity. I think it is profound and accurate. It also explains the gargantuan and ever growing popularity of this particular networking site.
I am a testament to the miraculous networking tool of Facebook since I recently found my estranged father on this site. My mother and he split before I was two years old. She excised his image out of every photograph that she had. I had no idea what this man looked like and had nothing but negative commentary from my mother. It certainly left a serious gaping hole in my heart. As I entered into my tumultuous 20 something decade, the curiosty burned in me. It seems as if I was always looking for him, but I never could find his name or address.
I was living in Vermont ski bumming while my non skiing boyfriend, Tom, had hightailed his scrawny butt to California for the winter. When he asked me to join him in March of 1983, I was more than eager to get out of remains of the lingering slushy Vermont winter/spring. There was no question what my main reason for going would be. It was to find my father, to do it with my quirky, worthless but lovable boyfriend at the time, added a sweet layer to the whole venture. This was my golden chance to finally find this elusive and unknowable figure who contributed to half of my genetic structure.
I went to all of the libraries I could and looked in phone books and city directories. I found his name in the San Francisco library of all places. It listed an address in San Jose. Who would imagine I would find my first clue in the city I happened to be born in!
I headed to San Jose to track down his location. This was in 1983 mind you, back before PC's were such an everyday appliance. I went from one lead to another trying to find out his last known place of employment. It seemed as if he changed jobs every 6 months. He is a Gemini so a certain amount of mercurialness is acceptable, I guess. After going through about 10 places, I reached a dead end, and ran out of leads. I was explaining my quest to a warm hearted waitress at a strip mall diner that was next door to the last known business location he had resided. There happened to be a cop on his donut break, socializing at his preferred booth. She asked him if there was anything he could do to help me. He replied that it was against the rules to use the drivers license data base for a query of that nature. Of course. But 5 minutes later she was running out with a piece of paper with Gordon Sagert's address.
I drove there in 10 minutes and then loitered across the street for 3 hours until a cadillac pulled in the driveway of the two story ranch home. My boyfriend walked up to the door and knocked. A man came to the door, Tom asked him if he was "Gordon Sagert." He said, "Yes, I am", and then Tom told him who I was. Gordon burst into tears and hugged me. He had not seen me since I was 2 years old. At the time, I did not realize or accept that this man, my father, in spite of what my mother had told me all my life, obviously loved me. I know I cried, too, and later sobbed buckets when my brother dropped what he was doing and raced up from San Diego to meet our father. But something inside me failed to open up when my fathers love beamed at me. I suppose it was a combination of factors that kept me somewhat removed.
Soon after, I went back to Vermont, six months later, I had downsized and stuffed all of my belongings in a tiny uhaul trailer and headed west to the land I was born, California.
I attempted to have a relationship with my father, but resented him when he tried to BE MY FATHER. My thoughts were "Who does he think he is?" He has no right to try to be my father now! I just want him to be my friend.
The idea of a father was something that was NOT a very good image in my mind-think stepfather here. So it was not long until I became disinterested in pursuing a relationship with this strange man who had been painted with so many brush strokes of my mother's memories.
Twenty six years goes by, its Fall of 2009 and I live in Hawaii, married for 15 years with two boys. One day my husband is soaking up the thousand words a picture tells. The picture is of me at six years old. He sees in the little girls face that someone loves her very much. He sees that someone is her father. The father she has never really known. My husband wants to contact him, I say "Not only no-but HELL NO."
I wonder what the reason was that I had to be raised by the horrible stepfather, that I hate. Why him? Was there something I needed to learn from this person that Gordon could not teach me? I accept this fate.
I had searched for Gordon on Facebook when I first got on a year ago, but nothing. Then two months after my husband had expressed his desire to contact my father, I searched for him again. This time Facebook had made a major change in its network and seach engines. This time, I find a Gordon Sagert, and sent him a brief, emotionally detached note. Ten days later he responded. (I yet to ask him what took him so long. Maybe he was away from a computer for awhile, who knows. But when he answered, I could see he was overjoyed and excited.
At age 53, I have opened my heart to this man, and am exploring uncharted waters.
It seems that Facebook is a manifestation of our great need to collect all of our loose ends and start tying them back together. And now there is even a reality show called "Find my Family". Just what is up with all of this anyway? Is this a spiritual and emotional revival of some sorts? Could it be that Consumer Nation is finally moving away from the national past-time of "Sport Shopping",uber consumption, and the toxic "Life takes Visa" mentality? Are we moving into a more emotional and spiritually involved pursuit of mending our torn psyches? Is this for real? I wonder how many folks actually hate such spectacles as "Real Housewives of Orange County" that parade their pultritude of phony wealth paid for with stacks of plastic cards in every flavor?
Why is it in this age of nano-second technology there is an even greater need to connect with our lost loves, and estranged relatives? This is a wonderous time for humanity because of the utilization of infinite tools to find each other in a very economical pursuit. There is few excuses to put off patching up all of these pukas in our lives from torn relationships.
I suppose any dufus could have seen what would come after the collapse of fake wealth taught humanity the lessons of compounding interest and living in homes where keeping up with the cable bill would send scores into a cascading collapse of defaults that followed through to subsistance dwelling in SUVS and detached tents in the county parks.
I know for certain that we are all about to make a quantum leap into some kind of hyper awareness. There is this growing urgency,to heal and patch our collective quilt. We are being prepared for this leap, and where we are going, I have no idea.
