He kept staring at me. That’s just not something you want to do sitting in the federal penitentiary.

I’m inside the Nissan, again, listening to a participant share his life with me. Well, as much as you can cram into forty-five minutes. Over the last three years, I’ve gotten used to those conversations where I only get to listen. This was one of those conversations. My questions were legit, timely, and well-placed, but I didn’t get to say much more.

He started with his time in prison.

I was running a poker table. This guy kept looking over at me. When I caught him, he’d look away. This went on for about twenty minutes. I needed to figure out what this dude’s problem was. So they dealt me out of the next hand. My excuse? I had to relieve myself.

So I stand up, moving past the table and creep up behind him, and tap him on the shoulder. He freaks out, ready to swing. I stare into his eyes.

“What’s your problem anyway?”

There was something about him. He looked familiar to me. Like I knew him. But I didn’t, you know?

He started apologizing, thinking I was going to beat him. “You look so familiar to me. Like I should know you or something.”

“Yeah? Well, who’s your family?” I asked. I thought I’d recognize his name. “I’m Walczak. Jack Walczak.”

His eyes got really wide, his face losing all color. “That’s my Dad’s brother. You’re my cousin. I gotta tell him I found you. He’s been looking for you for years.”

I had never met my real Dad, being adopted like I was at three. I didn’t know him, but I knew my adopted family.

“You talk to him about me, and I’ll hurt you, bad. I want to talk to him myself. Just give me his address and phone number. I’ll do the rest.”

He did as I told him, got me the address and phone number, and I found him.

I got out eight months later, figured out where he lived, and went right up to the front door and knocked. I was in my thirties now.

He answered the door and stood in front of me. I thought I was looking into a mirror that had aged me by 15 years. His shoulders were wider than mine, but it was the same face, the same eyes, the same hair color. This was my Dad.

“Can I help you?” he asked.

“Yeah. I wanted to shake your hand and thank you for f***ing my mother.”

His eyes got wide, he called me by name, grabbed my hand, and yanked me up the three stairs, hugging me tightly and weeping. Not crying. He was weeping. It took a minute for him to compose himself.

He invited me in, and I met my grandmother, who was living with him.

“Why didn’t you come looking for me?”

Grandma said, “You don’t know what this man has been through, trying to locate you through the courts.”

Dad walked into the other room and came back, a thick stack of paperwork in his hand, thick enough to be two abridged Oxford Dictionaries. I was floored.

“This is 15 years of documentation. I tried for 15 years to find you.”

I learned a lot that day. He’d been looking for me for years. The military had him listed as AWOL or MIA. He wasn’t either. He has the records to prove he was in Laos killing Russians for our country during the Vietnam War.

Adoption records are sealed, so he couldn’t ever find me.

I thought he was gone. I tried to kill the pain with anything I could take to have fun. It turned into an addiction, one that’s plagued me for more than thirty years. I figured it’s time to grow the f*** up and get my life squared away.