Without it we have nothing!  As I began to put together the words that would make up this piece, I didn’t know exactly what it was I was going to say or even how I would say it. However, after a plethora of prayer & a maelstrom of meditation, I began to believe that I would be able come up with something that, by a recent experience, would indeed give someone else a bit of something which I had been completely out of for so long.

After having distanced myself from my father through irresponsibility, irrationality and inescapable fear, I was unable to get/cause myself to reconnect with a man whom I admire a great deal, love very much and have disappointed more than my share. I felt as though I had begun to exist within a circle of light that, as time passed, began to grow even darker and ever smaller. I felt like there wasn’t any and there was little chance of it there ever being any as the days became weeks, months, years and eventually decades.

Fear frolicked in my “magnifying mind” as I created scenario after scenario of what his reaction might be, words he might say and how, if at all I would be able to handle myself after doing something I’ve needed/wanted to for so long now. (As if I was handling it well at all.)  LOL

Daily a desire to re-establish a contact burned within me. Despite this, however, I remained unable (unwilling,) to bring myself to initiate contact with the man who brought me into this world (with my mother’s help). Friends and relatives would suggest that I just pick up the phone (the 100 lb. one) and call him.

My Mom (divorced 40 yrs.) would always ask me if I had called him. More than once I had told her I planned on calling him as soon as I was finished talking with her. (Actions speak louder than words) Yet she too had been left wondering about me for almost two years and knew that she’d believe it IF she SAW it!

It seems rather ironic to me that I had volunteered for this “assignment” (writing this – not calling him) when in fact I had little of it but knew there was some so I agreed to do my best at getting it done.

Christmas Day, at about two o’clock, I called my Mom to wish her a Merry X-Mas and to ask her if she had gotten the poem I had sent via e-mail to her earlier that day. I’d been unable to get and send her even a card so I did my best at putting my love for her into words and BELIEVED she’d appreciate it. She, after some resuscitation of her “dinosaur” tablet, said she thought it was there and after a short time she read it aloud back to me. After she was done reading it she said “Thank you it’s adorable. Have you called your father yet?”

Once again I told her that I planned to (remember God shows his sense of humor when I make plans) as soon as we finished our talk.

This time however was different. I DID CALL!!! Lo and behold he even answered this time. I’d called him a few weeks earlier (believe it or not), and come to find out he was out of the country. Here I thought he just didn’t want to speak with me (he would often tell me “that’s what you get for doing your own thinking).

After wishing him a Merry X-Mas and telling him how much I loved him I asked him how the weather was in Huntington Beach on Christmas. He said he didn’t know ’cause he was out at his brother’s house in WVC. I asked him if he had the means to come pick me up from Fellowship Hall and he said yes!  WOW!

After enduring more than twenty years of being afraid to tell my own Dad that I was in fact gay he began to tell me that his uncle “PAT-sy” was also gay. He said he didn’t give a damn if I was gay, straight or what have you. His ONLY concern was that I was happy being who I really was!

Wow! What a relief! Just as it was as I first came into A.A. I had little of it if any, now by the grace of God I have more HOPE than ever.

I am an alcoholic who happens to be gay & when ANYONE anywhere reaches out for help I want the hand of A.A. to be there for that I am responsible.

Alan B.