If you had asked me before today, I would have said that there is absolutely nothing worthwhile or useful about insomnia. I’ve struggled with it to varying degrees of intensity for most of my adult life and I have never found it to be anything other than exhausting and frustrating and just downright awful in every way.

But this morning I got proven wrong.

Backing up, it’s relevant to understand some stuff about my history. I was born when my parents were both 19, the result of a holiday party which was perhaps a little too fun. My mom knew from the very beginning that she had every intention of keeping me, but she and my dad had actually broken up before this news was discovered. Not wanting to deal with what a fickle parental relationship might look like she gave my dad the choice – you are either all in or you’re all out. And being a 19 year old boy in his first year of college without any familial support of his own it’s not surprising or even particularly damning to say that he took the escape route.

Through a series of unlikely events I learned of his whereabouts when I was 18, almost 19, years old. It took me a few months but I eventually decided to write a letter (this is back in the day when email was around but certainly a less common means of communication than it is today.) It was one of the most nerve-wracking things I have ever done.

But it had a happy ending. My bio dad reached back out and just a little over a month later on a trip to Pittsburgh to visit my grandmother, we met in a coffee shop and talked for hours. I came to discover that it didn’t take him very long, just about 2 or 3 years, before he regretted his decision and wanted to change his mind. Apparently he actually drove all the way to my grandparents house where I was living with my mom, got out of the car and walked up to the front door, but then chickened out before he rang the doorbell because he was convinced that my grandfather would meet him at the door with a shotgun because how dare he show up here after all this time.

So it’s a happy ending in that at least now, at 19 years of age, I was going to get to know and have my bio dad in my life in some way shape or form, along with my three much younger brothers. But it wasn’t necessarily the story that you might have in your head. Or if you’ve gone through anything like this, it may be exactly the story you have in your head.

There was now a connection, but relationship might be a strong word to use. He began helping me pay for college, and certainly helped me out of a jam or two financially when I was in my early twenties and my now husband and I were struggling to get by. He was amiable to me stopping by the house with Christmas presents or Easter baskets for the boys and chatting for 30 or 40 minutes. He helped pay for my wedding. Once he and his first wife separated this was replaced with two trips a year, one in the summer and one around New Year’s, where we would either travel to Pittsburgh or they would travel to Maryland and we would spend the weekend together. Once they even invited us along on summer vacation at the beach.

So I’m sure this all sounds pretty normal, but it certainly didn’t match the fantasies I’d developed in my brain as I was growing up about what it would look like to meet him. The thing is, we never had a parent-child relationship because I was already an, albeit young, adult out on my own when we met. My dad is also the kind of person who isn’t naturally inclined to forming close relationships with adults. So we now had this interaction with each other, and it wasn’t uncomfortable, but it also wasn’t what I would call close.

Every now and then in a blue moon he might call to see how I was doing, but that was rare. Most of the time communicating involved me reaching out to plan our next visit. And while I know he was glad that I found him and was in his life, he didn’t really view me as one of his kids. And for the most part this didn’t bother me because I certainly was nowhere near thinking of him as my dad. But as the years went by it started to bother me more and more.

One of the memories that I have indelibly etched in my brain happened at his wedding to his second wife. I was certainly invited, and was sat at the table with all of my brothers, so clearly part of the family. But when picture taking time happened, the guests including myself and my husband were all standing around and actually watching the pictures being taken just by the nature of the location of the wedding. Her daughters and my brothers were called up to have pictures taken with my dad and his new wife. And suddenly my dad said “Oh wait we’re forgetting somebody. Jamie get up here!” If you are a regular reader here you will know that my name is not Jamie. Jamie is a friend of the boys who grew up on the same cul-de-sac as they did and whose mother had worked with my dad for years. I remember standing there and feeling my stomach sink and my hands start to shake. They finished up the photos almost immediately thereafter and I excused myself and fled to the bathroom where I locked myself in a stall and cried.

Why did it matter so much to me? I was still at a point where I didn’t instinctively think of him as my dad so why did I expect him to instinctively view me as part of his family? We’d just been apart for so long that it was hard to wrap our brains around what we were to each other beyond technically being related. I knew there was no malice or ill intent or even dismissiveness in what he said, it wasn’t a conscious thing at all. But somehow it still bothered me in a way that I couldn’t shake.

And this is kind of how things continued for a really long time. A casual relationship, maybe a few calls here and there, a couple visits a year. Things didn’t start to change until I was in my mid-30s, and I’m not sure that it would have ever changed if it wasn’t for two things.

During this time my dad had divorced his second wife and married his third wife. The situation was certainly a bit strange, her being younger than I am, and it could easily have been a disaster for his and my relationship. His first wife had not really wanted me directly involved with the family life, she only really seemed to support a relationship with my dad, his second wife had not had any issue with me, she’d always been perfectly amiable towards me, but what would this new person think?

Well the reality is, she was the one who actually started to include me more closely into their lives. The other memory indelibly etched into my brain related to my relationship with my dad also happened at a wedding, his wedding to his third wife. From the get-go it was clear that something had changed. I had people walking up to me at the wedding asking me if I was my dad’s daughter and exclaiming how excited they were to finally meet me. But these people had “met” me before, at my Dad’s second wedding. They’d just had no idea who I was because he hadn’t made a point of it, I’d just been a random guest to these people. That was not the case here. I sat in the ceremony with all of the family, his and hers, I was part of the family photos. And when the best man gave his speech I have never been so shocked or surprised…. so gobsmacked in my entire life. Just a few minutes in to the toast he mentioned that my dad was the father of four (not three) amazing children. I was already shocked by that, but he went on. The first, he said, is his daughter Tiffani. He then said some things about me but I would be lying to you if I could tell you I remembered what they were. For the second time in my life I found myself tearing up at one of my dad’s wedding.

The second thing that happened was that the oldest of my brothers, 11 years my junior, decided to go to college in Maryland near where my husband and I live. That obviously created a very strong and certainly more “older sibling – younger sibling” tie between the two of us. And he struggled a bit while he was in college with various things and being the one nearby I was the family member on site. Which meant that I was talking to my dad more, in terms of relaying information or asking questions or trying to figure things out and what not. To my brother I became a sister, but my impression was that to my dad I almost became a co-parent, not a daughter. Still it was closer, and we had more communication, than we’d ever had in our relationship to date.

During this time my dad and stepmom also adopted a little baby, my baby brother 35 years younger than me. About a year-and-a-half after that we finally were able to bring my two-year-old son home. My stepmom LOVES kids. She took to the role of grandmother without a second of hesitation and adores my son to the moon and back. And now having two kids that were only six months apart in age became a catalyst for more interactions.

Then about a year-and-a-half ago my dad was diagnosed with cancer. Now having cancer is never a good thing, and is always worrisome if you’re someone like me who’s lost so many people to the disease, but in terms of treatability and survival rates his situation was very positive. But it still yielded a subtle change in the relationship. My brothers were fairly oblivious and focused on their own lives. But having been here and done that, I had a different perspective on it. I offered to come up to be there during the surgery but my dad firmly insisted that that was not necessary. Still, I made a point of coming up to visit pretty soon after the surgery. And I think I did an okay job of checking in and staying more in touch with him while the treatment was going on. It wasn’t a monumental change in the depths of our conversations or our relationship but it was a subtle change nonetheless.

Then at either the end of November or beginning of December, it’s a little blurry and I can’t remember the exact date, I got a text from my dad that said “call me when you get a chance.” Call me when you get a chance is the content of 99% of the texts I got from my dad, and it’s never anything good. This case was no exception. The cancer was back. But once again he assured me that it is a very similar situation to the last time and that it was very treatable. Still, I decided to make a point of planning a trip up for a long weekend over the New Year’s holiday.

And while I was there I found out that the picture wasn’t quite as innocuous as he had made it out to be to me and my brothers. It wasn’t a case of imminent “you only have 6 months to live,” but it was also couched by his doctor in terms of creating a plan of care that would keep him comfortable and functional for as long as possible, hopefully as many as four years.

Four years.

And I get that these things are always a guess based on statistics and that plenty of people blow their expected survival rate COMPLETELY out of the water. And even if it is only 4 years, that compared to the diagnoses that other people get, 4 years is a long time and would be considered an absolute blessing in a lot of cases. And I’m not saying 4 years versus six months isn’t a blessing in this case either. But the thing is, in that moment when I heard the news I realized I’d already lost so much time. Not just those 19 years, but all the time since when I didn’t necessarily make any more effort than he had in trying to establish a real relationship, versus what could almost pass as more of an acquaintance. I felt like the world had fallen out from underneath me.

And that’s when things actually changed. I had a long conversation with my dad late one night during that trip, and for the first time it was a real conversation about feelings and family. And subsequently I have had several very long text conversations with him that also embodied real content. We weren’t just talking, we were communicating. We weren’t just exchanging jokes or talking about my brothers, we were talking about ourselves and us too.

And so… You may have already forgotten that this post started out saying that insomnia is a good thing. Or maybe you remember that and you’re wondering when the hell I’m going to get around to saying what any of this has to do with insomnia. Right now it’s 6am and I’m sitting in my dad and stepmom’s house waiting for my brothers to wake up so I can get them ready and take them to school. My dad and stepmom left for the hospital at 4:30 this morning to have my dad’s tumor removal surgery, and I’ll be joining them after my brothers are dropped off.

I got in last night and ironically I slept okay, well okay for me at least, which is to say I maybe got 2 or 3 hours of sleep. But I woke up at some point that was clearly either the middle of the night or very early in the morning as it was completely dark outside. I tossed and turned a bit trying to get back to sleep but wasn’t having any success, so I checked the clock and saw that it was 4am. Seeing that I immediately got up and went downstairs because it meant that I could see my dad before they left for the hospital and say good luck. When I went to bed last night I never expected to get that opportunity. And I’m so glad I got that chance, not because I expect anything bad at all to happen today, but just because I got to do it.

See, unlike last time I wouldn’t let my dad brush off the importance of the situation, I didn’t let him get his way in insisting that it would be stupid for me to drive all the way up here for his surgery. And to his credit while he did start in that same vein he pretty quickly changed his mind and understood when I told him how I felt about the whole situation. In some ways, though maybe he has no way to express it other than couching it in the terms that he’s glad somebody will be here to sit with my stepmom at the hospital, I know it means a lot to him that I’m here. And I’m here because for the first time in 42 years he’s my dad and I’m his daughter, and as his daughter this is exactly where I should be.