Rainstorms and ghosts of the past

09 Mar, 2026

Last night I heard wind whipping through my neighborhood, rain battering the windows, thunder in the distance, and thought about my dad.

When I say dad, I don’t mean the man who gave me his DNA, made a momentary appearance on my first birthday, and then disappeared.

I mean my stepdad. I’ve called him many things over the years: stepdad, Paul, “my sister’s dad”. But in my heart, he was always just “Dad.”

When I was a kid, he loved to sit on the front porch and watch the storms. Because of him, I never found storms scary... they were therapeutic. Sometimes I’d sit out there with him, past my bedtime, and we’d talk about life. About his “old man”, about drugs and women, and whatever else came up. We had an interesting relationship in that I never felt like his son, and yet, I never felt unloved by him. He didn’t talk to me like I was a kid. He didn’t hide the cruelties of the world from me. He always shot straight.

He was a stocky man with long blonde hair, a thick beard, blue eyes, and tattoos covering most of his body. He looked like a badass biker, despite never owning the Harley he dreamed of.

Then there was me: brown skin, brown eyes, black hair, chubby little soft kid. We looked nothing alike, but when he called me his son, I knew he meant it. And despite the racism I experienced in the small town I grew up in, I never once felt it from him. The proud “redneck” (self-proclaimed), who often said, “I’m not racist, I hate everyone equally”, was one of few people who saw past my skin.

I don’t remember when my mom and him separated, but I remember I wasn’t sad. I didn’t feel much of anything back then. My mom’s new boyfriend moved in soon after, but he was a deadbeat and it wasn’t long before we got evicted from our childhood home.

So my sister and I went to live with my stepdad to finish out the school year, but moved out abruptly when I found a tiny white rock, resting on a penny, resting on a spoon. I’d never seen crack cocaine before, but had a feeling this was it.

My mom took us that night in a screaming, chaotic exit. But despite her efforts in the years to follow, she never succeeded in making me hate him. My sisters, on the other hand—his daughters by blood—soon wanted nothing to do with him.

My dad got clean, put his life together, did better, but it was never enough. My mom was very much not happy after their separation, and seeing him happy pissed her off to no end. When he bought anything for himself, she’d rant,

“Oh, he can buy that, but when I need money for yous kids he doesn’t have it?”

Forget the child support payments, the many times he DID give money, or the fact he supported me despite having no legal obligation to do so. It didn’t matter—he was a deadbeat.

But not to me. I knew he was a good man carrying a lot of pain. I knew that, because of those thunderstorm talks. I knew things my sisters didn’t—things my mom probably didn’t know. I saw him battling his demons and doing it alone. And there was a difference between him and my mom:

He swallowed his pain. She spit hers like caustic venom.

A memory comes to mind. The only time I ever remember him spanking me.

He came home tired from a long warehouse shift and was met by my mom screaming about how bad “us kids” were, and telling him he needed to “whoop my ass”.

When I remember this moment, I’m outside myself. A spectator. I’m bent over his knee, he’s hitting me, I’m wailing... but there’s nothing on his face. No anger, no frustration, only... exhaustion.

Compared with the countless leather-belt beatings from my mom, who would beat us for just about anything, it was nothing. Unlike her, he took no joy in hurting us. He didn’t take it out on us when he had a rough day. He kept his hurt directed inward.

During my military years we grew apart. Being halfway across the world, I expected as much. But even though he wasn’t one for conversation, he messaged me almost daily, just to shoot the shit.

He was always busting my balls about something, but also telling me how proud he was, calling me “boo” (my childhood nickname), and telling me he loved me. Until one day his phone disconnected, he disappeared from Facebook, and I lost contact with him completely.

Last I heard, he was homeless, still struggling with drugs, and past the point of saving. I sometimes imagine flying across the country, back to my hometown, to find him. I’d drive around endlessly in ghettos I fought so hard to get away from, looking for him. I’d save him. Clean him up, buy him that Harley, and watch him live the rest of his life with some of the happiness that always seemed just out of his reach.

I wish I could tell him how much I love him, and how much of an impact he made on me, despite his brokenness. How I never hated him, not even for a minute.

We’ll likely never speak again. I anticipate the day when I’ll hear through the grapevine that he’s gone... Maybe he already is.

But last night when I stepped into the cold, misty air, I felt close to him again. And I saw him, huddled in a sleeping bag under an overpass, hair even longer, beard even rattier, watching the same storm. Despite being soggy, cold, and hungry, he heard the thunder, saw the lightning, and closed his eyes.

Smiling.

#essays