Who's your daddy?

I found out recently I'm forever the legal child of a man named Ron White . Ive never met Ron White, but according to the social security office I recently visited to finally update my card to my married name, he's my dad. He was listed on my birth certificate as being my dad because my mom was technically married to him when I was born. She told me once she couldn't locate him for a divorce, and my biological dads involvement was short lived...the hospital ruling was that the legal husband be listed on the birth certificate as the father in 1976. So Ron White legally became my dad forever. I thought we undid this when I was given the choice at the age of 10 to legally change my last name to Jacobs (after my grandparents), or Hart (after my biological dad Id just met). But no, at 43 years of age I just found out that in the eyes of US law...he's still my dad. I can only hope he has amassed a large fortune in this lifetime and somehow when he dies, some court, some where, will locate me using these legal records to tell me he never ended up on the birth certificate of any other kids he never knew and now I'm the only heir left to his multi million dollar estate. A girl can dream can't she?

My actual dad split when I was a newborn. My mom was left with a young baby and my 7 year old half sister Lori. She did what any reasonable young single mother would do...she took a roadtrip with a friend down south to visit her friends boyfriend who was an inmate at a Florida state penitentiary. While visiting, another inmate saw my mom, and declared:
"When I get out of here, Im going to find that woman!".

His term must have been coming to its expiration soon because he did just that not long after. His name was David Witkowski, and as far as I knew, as a three year old child, he was my dad. From what I learned later in life, yes he'd been to prison... BUT, he hadn't killed anyone or anything; he'd only shot a guy in the knee caps who owed him some money on a drug deal. So, we all lived happily ever after. Just kidding. Actually, despite his own vices and bend towards criminal activity, he was really good to me. And my mom, despite some choices she'd made in life, truly loved me and was doing the best she could with what she knew.

David was just a little polish guy with a big reputation on the streets of Detroit. He joined a motorcycle gang named "The Iron Mustangs". His nickname was "little Dave". They all had nicknames, and unfortunately for him, there was a "Big Dave" who outsized him in stature. What he lacked in size though, he made up for in intensity. People on the streets feared him. So I spent six years of my life ages 3-9 around a lot of tough guys with big hearts. While a lot of families would hang out and socialize at church and synagogue on weekends, our family socializing was the biker bars in Detroit . The gang was like a family to us. They'd buy me endless sodas and chips, give me quarters for the pinball machines and jute box, then tell me I was going to grow up one day to be a heartbreaker.

The Iron Mustangs owned a public race track for dirt bikes in Brighton Michigan called "Mustang Acres". I spent a lot weekends there with David and his biker family. The concession stands were free for me, being Little Davids" kid. I could explore the track grounds on my own, each junk food all day, watch the races from the trails. At the end of the night the public would disappear and the bikers would be left counting their cash from the days events; drinking, partying, and getting high in the lodge. Our life seemed normal to me, even though I noticed it was a bit different for my grandparents and cousins. Parties, rock n roll music, joints being passed, tough biker guys and their "old ladies" with feathered hair, day long charcoal barbeques, getting together at the beaches and parks and drive in movie theaters with a travelling partying family who stuck together. It wasn't conventional, but it also wasn't a terrible life for a little kid.

David used to take me on his drug runs around Detroit. I remember driving in the middle of these dismal winter days, always passing the old Wonder bread factory to our destination. Windows cracked to let his cigarette smoke escape, cold damp winter air filling the car as the toxic fumes were released. Motown music always playing on the radio. The house we ended up at always had a common denominator. It was always old, big, and in a neighborhood with a liquor store on the corner. If it was summer, I could stay outside and find some kids to talk to. Or I'd get some change and walk to the liquor store for a popsicle and a soda. If it was cold I had to stay inside. Now if it wasn't just a friendly sale and he had a bigger task at hand, like breaking up larger amounts of marijuana, or weighing out cocaine for distribution, he'd send me upstairs to an attic to explore and stay out of their way. If I close my eyes, I can still remember these old houses in Detroit, their distinct smell, the dusty attics, the kitchen linoleum floors peeling up at the corners, stacks of Hustler and playboy magazines stored in the attics they sent me to explore....of course to protect me from knowing what they were doing....but I always knew what they were doing.

David ran a landscape business and drove a cab part time. Maybe he was making an honest attempt at a life outside crime, or maybe he was just using those jobs as a front to funnel cash...Ill never know, I like to tell myself its the former.

When I was nine, my mom decided it was best to leave him. She had me pack up all my stuff in a large black plastic trash bag and we left in the middle of the night. My guess is she was worried about how he would react to her leaving because of his street reputation. So, we disappeared in the middle of the night like trashbag bandits and stayed at my aunts house until he moved out and a divorce was finalized. He continued to pick me up from time to time so we could hang out. As far as I knew, he was my dad and my parents were divorced. He died later that year after a short hospital stay. We never went to his funeral. I think he tried to reach out to my mom while he was hospitalized and she never responded. Im pretty sure she didn't realize he'd died until after the funeral. She always regretted missing his funeral.

When she found out he died, she took me to an old Mexican restaurant in Detroit to tell me. Best to just tell me the whole thing at once. You know, rip it off band aid style. So the conversation went something like this:

"David died... but he wasn't actually your dad anyways. You have a different dad, and his grandmother lives near here...would you like to visit her"?

So that's how you rip off a band aid….your dads dead, he actually wasn't your dad...you have a different dad...want to meet a new grandma?

"Holy smokes, Can I at least finish my taco salad?" I imagine I said

So off we went.... to visit a grandma from a dad I never knew existed.
Did I mention I was nine?

My actual dad answered the door. He was still struggling in life and living in the basement of his grandmothers house to our surprise. We'd shown up there expecting I'd meet my grandma. I'm pretty sure my mother about fainted when that front door opened. That's how I met Jeff Hart , my biological dad. The timing couldn't have been better for him. He was eager to get out of his grandmas basement and this was a good opportunity for him to do just that. So, he came and lived in our basement instead. And we lived happily ever after.
Just kidding.
He was a serious alcoholic and had other drug and personality issues and randomly made me the target of his misery.

We moved from my childhood home in Oak Park to a rented apartment located 30 minutes away in Farmington, Mi. New kid, new school, new life. I was grounded for a major portion of the following two years for anything you could imagine. "You missed a spot vacuuming", "you didn't set the table right", "you looked at me funny", "your attitude isn't right". "You argue too much". I think he was trying to catch up on l0 years he'd missed disciplining me. I spent a lot of days staring at the kids on the playground below outside my bedroom window. My mom felt awful about it, so she'd sneak me out of my room from time to time when he was out cold from drinking too much to get me out of the apartment. Luckily for me he drank a lot.

It all ended on my 11th birthday. It was July 1st, 1987 and I had my bags packed for 3 weeks of camp Tamarack. He just couldn't take a pause on reigning misery on me. My mom was so frustrated, she intervened..."Cant you be nice to her for one day on her birthday?" Then we walked out the door and she loaded me on a bus and sent me off for three weeks. When the bus returned to the JCC in West Bloomfield...my mom was there ready to take me home. But we drove to a different home... in another location, in another city, with another school, casually mentioning as we pulled into the driveway..."oh yeah, we don't live with your dad anymore".

I was fatherless from that time until I met Jesus as a 31 year old . He introduced me to his own Father :)

So who's my daddy? If you ask the Social Security administration they'll tell you its Ron White of California.
I disagree, I'm going with Jesus' Daddy.



Bonus!
As an added blessing, my Father in Heaven gave me my husband Jeff in 2011...who ironically has the same name as my biological dad. Jeff told me early on in our relationship he was in my life to show me how Jeffs are supposed to act :). More recently, when my mom passed away in 2017, I collected all these old photo albums of my early childhood...I saw old pictures of David Witkowski, and I realized.... that the man who raised me for 6 years, and treated me like his own daughter, eerily resembled my husband and stepdad to my own kids. God is amazing!