Trains and Jet Planes

How I laid the Nature vs. Nurture debate to rest

This meeting had been 38 years in the making. And maybe it shouldn’t have been, but that’s life for you.

It would be easy to blame him for never reaching out to me. Or, sort of sadistically, I could blame myself for not making a greater effort to track him down. But that’s silly and pointless on both parts. He had his own story to live, and whether he made me part of it or not was entirely up to him—why bother judging him, good or bad, over any of it? Would I trade a single memory or moment of my life, or any of the joy and blessing of my upbringing, just to have this stranger be more of a presence in my life?

Nah.

And me? Why would I go to the trouble of tracking him down any sooner than I did? What reason did I have?

I had tried, a couple of times. Half-hearted tries, really. A chance for a buddy and I to spend a Saturday doing something different, driving into the town where I’d heard he might live, stopping to ask local police if they’d ever heard of him. But then my buddy and I bought a couple of burgers and some Dr. Pepper and went about our lives as usual, no closer to finding the guy than we had been when we set out. And no more bothered by it, either.

But now, here we were. Kara and I, standing in the parking lot of a Mexican restaurant, at the more-or-less halfway point between his house and mine, which meant we were both hours from home. Here, after weeks of exchanging emails, getting to know each other in the medium of writing, where both of us were actually quite comfortable... here we’d finally meet.

It wasn’t the first time we’d laid eyes on each other.

Back in my twenties, when my cousin (his niece) got married, we’d both turned up for the wedding. I had spotted him, and then I’d gone out into a little playground outside the church, and my girlfriend at the time held me and comforted me as I cried.

Why had I cried?

Seemed like the thing to do, I guess. I don’t know that I was exactly sad. I didn’t feel that I’d missed out on anything. But there was a sense within me that when you’ve been rejected by someone who should have loved you, the proper response is to shed a tear and take comfort from someone who actually does love you.

Since then, my perspective has changed. But maybe I needed that moment in a church playground with a girl’s arms around me in order for that perspective to evolve. That makes sense to me.

He and his wife arrived at the restaurant. Kara and I recognized him almost instantly because, well, he looked like me. The same eyes, the same nose, the same mouth. Older. Many more years. But you could see it.

Kara noticed other traits, too. Mannerisms. Gestures. She found it eerie.

We had dinner. We swapped stories. We got to know each other.

Turns out we were a lot more similar than I would have expected.

We both liked to sing, and we were both showboats about it. We both read a lot. And, most shocking to me, we both were writers, both novelists. What are the odds?

In the argument of Nature vs. Nurture, I have always landed very firmly on the nurture side. I spent my whole life believing, without doubt, that our personalities were formed by our environment. That we become who we are because of the experiences we have, the people in our lives, the day-to-day of our upbringing.

That may be true to some extent. But I can tell you, from direct and personal experience, that Nature also plays her role. Because without having any contact with this man for 38 years, he somehow contributed some primal and fundamental things to my mannerisms and my personality.

I found that equally alarming and comforting.

Alarming, because it implies that some part of us, of who we are as individuals, is entirely out of our control. We are walking, talking embodiments of manifest destiny. Fate is a railroad track. And that... bothered me.

But it became comforting once I realized it was only a half truth. Because yes, we’re on a set of rails. But we can control a lot, from those rails. Our speed, our direction, our destination. And, unlike the inanimate and unthinking objects of this tortured metaphor, we can choose to rebel against our own nature and set our own course and be the jet planes we always wanted to be.

Our rails become our runways.

My dinner with Father was pleasant. It was surreal. We got to know each other a bit better, and from there we built a relationship. That relationship didn’t last more than a few years—eventually it became clear that I was the only one making the effort to keep things going, and eventually my drive to do that faded. He had challenges and events and circumstances in his life that made it hard for him to keep our relationship alive. So did I. And since neither of us seemed bothered by the absence of the other, we went on. One train and one jet plane, starting from the same track but now a whole sky apart.

Will I ever see or hear from him again?

It could happen.

Though I think it far more likely that one day I’ll get a message about his funeral. And I’ll attend. And, like that time I sat in a swing set outside of a church, with my girlfriend comforting me, I’ll shed a few tears. Because whether he was capable of being in my life or not is as irrelevant as whether or not I was capable of being in his.

We met. That was enough. If he ever wants more, I’m easy to find.

I don’t resent him. I don’t regret our lack of a relationship. I am actually grateful to him for his part in bringing me into this world, and for the actual and genuine good moments we did share. We likely won’t have more. But they were more than enough.

I’m grateful.

I write for a living. It’s the only work I do now. A dream I lived for, all my life. And to continue doing it, I rely on support from blessed readers like you. You could become a paid subscriber on my Substack, and I would be very grateful. But you could support me just as well by finding and buying one of my books, and sharing my work with others. That, I’ll say, is the greatest blessing you can offer me.

Go to https://kevintumlinson.com/books

And share this post and that link with your friends and family.

A NOTE AT THE END

My origin story is complicated. Really complicated.

For example, parse this fact: My mother’s brother married my father’s sister.

Don’t worry, I have trouble with it, too.

Further complicating things, I have a sister who was born just two months after I was. I have a brother serving life in prison for a double homicide. I have another brother who was drummed out of his job as a prison guard for selling contraband to the prisoners. Another brother has a felony record. Another was lost to Sudden Death Syndrome as a baby. And there’s one who is, apparently, a pretty decent guy with a successful career, who has zero interest in knowing me or any of the bunch. And I respect that.

My father is an ex-cop, an ex-prison guard, and a pretty decent guy. He really did write some novels, mostly westerns. And he plays guitar and sings. He makes good barbecue. He can build some impressive things. There’s actually a lot to admire about him, so I’m really hoping I haven’t painted him in a poor light. Things just are what they are.

Honestly, there are a lot of stories I can mine, regarding the paternal side of my bloodline, and my own upbringing. Like I said, it’s complicated. And that’s good for me... I mean, I ‘m a writer. It was like I was born with stories.

But I will say, Father’s Day is a holiday fraught with an eclectic blend of emotions for me.

I am honored and grateful to have some incredible father figures in my life. And I have such deep admiration and respect for men who are good fathers. The world absolutely needs you.

I have not been blessed with the privilege of being a father, myself. And it’s unlikely I ever will. I won’t know the joy.

But for all of you who do, I am grateful. Bless you all.