At fourteen, I wasn't thinking about my father. I was playing football. First-string wide receiver on the freshman team at Piner High, defensive line too. I wasn't a star. I was a kid who could run, stay on his feet, and know where he was supposed to be when the ball snapped.

The stands were never full for freshman games. Parents, girlfriends, a few old-timers who'd watch any game played under lights. I looked up there sometimes between plays, the way every kid does. I wasn't looking for anybody in particular. As far as I knew, my father had no idea what name I was living under, what school I went to, or whether I played sports at all. He wasn't part of my world. He was barely part of my imagination.

More than thirty years later, my father's brother Danny and I had a long phone call, and in the middle of it he told me something that rearranged my entire life. In the fall of 1983, my father found me. He and Danny drove all the way from Arkansas to California to see me, and on a Friday night in October, my father sat in the stands at one of my games. Row six. Close enough to hear my coach yelling. Close enough that when I pulled my helmet off at halftime and looked up into the crowd, I may have looked straight at him.