At fourteen, I wasn't thinking about my father. I was playing football. I was the first-string wide receiver on the freshman team at Piner High, and I also played defensive line. I wasn't a star. I was a kid who could run, stay on his feet, and remember where he was supposed to be on the next play.

The stands weren't full for freshman games. There were parents, girlfriends, brothers and sisters, and a few people who would watch any football game happening under the lights. I looked up there sometimes, but I wasn't looking for my father. I had no reason to believe he knew anything about me, including the name I was using or what school I went to. He wasn't on my mind. I was a jock playing football, watching the ball and waiting for the next down.

More than thirty years later, I learned that my father had been sitting in row six. His brother Danny told me about it during a phone call. In October 1983, the two of them drove from Arkansas to California looking for me. My father had finally learned the name I had been living under since I was two. They found the school, learned when the freshman team played, and sat down six rows above the field.