Nick Shepard (left) tells his friend Hugh Ryan the story of traveling to Glasgow, Scotland, to meet his biological father for the first time after Goggling the man’s name.
Originally aired June 29, 2007, on NPR’s Morning Edition.
Transcript
Nick Shepard (NS) and Hugh Ryan (HR)
NS: I woke up the morning after I got to Glasgow and I decided to just go to the university to look around, see what I thought. I had the address written down for my biological father and um I went there I looked down the hallway and I saw a sign with his name. Finally I just said this is probably the only chance in my life I will ever have to do this. I walked up to the door and I knocked and he looked at me with a look that was, not quite hostile, but impatient.
I said, ’Do you have a minute?’ He said, ’Sure.’ I said, ’Do you remember living in Connecticut twenty years ago?” and he got this kind of odd smile on his face and said, ’Yes, I remember it.’ I said, ’Well do you remember a relationship with a woman named Eloise that you had? And he says, “Yes, Yes I do.” I said, “Well um I am the result of that relationship.” He says, “Ohhhahhh,” walks over towards me and I have this panic that he is going to touch me but he doesn’t. He walks past me and he closes the door and walks back and sits down at the table where I’m seated and says ’So you’re here.’ I say, ’Yeah, I told him I had three questions I wanted to ask him.” He said ’Sure.’ First I wanted to know if there was any history of diseases or things I needed to be aware of genetically. Just to get that baseline out of the way. And he said, ’No, not that I know of’. And then I asked him if he would be willing to just explain a little bit the circumstances surrounding my birth and how it came to be that I was born and you left.
For the first time and only time during our 15 minute conversation the grin left his face and eventually he said, “Well, I think that at that point that Eloise was ready to have a child. I said, ‘And you weren’t?’ And he laughed and said “No never was, and never have been.” He didn’t really offer me anything more.
HR: Did you ask your third question?
NS: Yea, I let that ruminate for a minute and then I asked my third question which was, ’May I take a picture of you?’ I had a little disposable camera. Took a picture of him and that was that. It ended with me saying, ’Well I don’t want to take up too much of your time.’ I said goodbye and he turned to walk back towards his computer and he says, ‘ Goodbye for now.’ I don’t know if I will ever contact him, if I will ever want him to be a part of my life in any way, but for now I don’t. I walked back through this park in Glasgow back to towards the place where I was staying and I felt like I had made a peace with a part of myself that I never expected, that I even never thought possible.