During the summer I turned 14, I came home to a typewritten letter waiting for me on my bedspread. My dad had entered a drug treatment program part of his rehabilitation was writing to his family about what hed been through, and to apologize if necessary.

Apologies were necessary.

My father had disappeared five or six years before, after a custody battle and then a failure to pay child support. Since then, wed moved away, and my mother remarried and had a second child. The few memories I had of my father were mostly of a swimming pool that made my eyes bloodshot, animals that I loved and an awful skin rash I picked up when hed taken me to Hawaii without telling my mother.

In that first letter, he explained his addiction and the consequences it had on his life, and how when trouble descended, hed been incapable of dealing with it, so hed stayed loaded. Now finished with an 28-day rehab program, he planned to remain in Monterey, California a city with a historically calming effect on him since his stint at Fort Ord when he was 18.

He closed the letter: There will be a new twist to what I do, how I do it and who I choose to do it with. I am feeling stronger every day, but I didnt get sick in one day and I dont think Ill get well in one month either. Would like to hear from you. Hope you understand.

I was 14. I didnt understand. But I had a father that wanted to hear from me, so I wrote back. And then he did. And then I did. For 17 years.