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I saw the look on my father's face the hour I was born .

Don’t ask me how; I have spent thirty-five years trying to untangle that memory. Maybe it was a tale told so often it settled in me like a second skin. Maybe some wounds carry vision with them. Whatever the cause, I remember the look: his smile arriving bright and hopeful, then stalling, turning brittle. He scanned the room as if something precious had been taken. The teddy bear slipped from his hand. The church members behind him fell quiet. My mother hugged me closer. I hadn’t cried, yet disappointment already knew my name.

For ten years he had fasted and prayed for a child; every Sabbath he knelt, bargaining with God for a miracle. When the miracle arrived, it was not the shape he had imagined. Pastor Openj used to tell the congregation, "As you pray for rain, prepare for mud." My father wanted rain and nothing else - blessings without the grime. An elder, respected and admired, he took this as the harshest test of his faith.

My mother only deepened his despair by insisting I was a blessing. Her story echoed Hannah’s: years of scorn for barrenness, a family that turned her suffering into moral judgment. My grandmother and Aunt Adwina, stalwarts of the Legion Maria, pounced on every misfortune as evidence of spiritual failing. To them, disaster had a sermon attached. To my mother, faith was less about buildings than trust.

My grandfather Noah, by contrast, spoke in silences; his acceptance, if it existed, was a closed book. He loved me in the small, steady ways of a man who adapted to his wife’s faith - Catholic, Legion Maria - changing robes and pews just to belong. My father was not his father, though he too drifted between congregations. He became Adventist when he married my mother, tired of problems without answers. The move worked outwardly: a sponsored wedding, steady promotion to elder, a branch to oversee in our village of Lul. To others he was faith’s triumph; to himself, proof that devotion paid.

Then I was born. For thirty-five years after I turned six months old, he vanished from our lives.

"Hello, sir. There’s a caller insisting on speaking to you personally." Nancy, my secretary, stood in the office doorway with the receiver.

"You know the routine," I said, still bent over my script. "Tell them I’m busy."

"I tried. He says you know him."

That stopped me. Few people could claim such a right. "Who is it?"

Nancy hesitated, then gave me the phone. The voice on the line was older, frayed, hauntingly familiar. "I am your father."

The room tightened around me. There is war in many places - on battlefields, in the corridors of power, inside the human mind. My father fought both. He saw my condition as an everlasting error. In a society that marked children like me as omens, he carried shame like armor. Sabbath by Sabbath, fewer people came to his services; villagers whispered; congregants questioned his authority. How could a man preach blessing while raising what they called a curse?

At home the fights never stopped. "If at six months your son cannot even lift his head," he would say, "what more evidence do you want?"

My mother’s reply never changed: "I will not give away my child." Those six words became her shield and her sword.

Convinced that God had finally answered ten years of prayer, he invited members of his congregation to the hospital. Even the church media chairperson was present. In his excitement, he embraced customs he had previously mocked. He bought flowers. He bought a giant teddy bear. He walked through the maternity ward proudly displaying gifts for the woman who was about to make him a father.

When the nurse finally called him inside, he entered the room accompanied by relatives and church members.

The photographer captured a family picture the moment he stepped through the door.

It was the last photograph to preserve his smile.

By the time the flash faded, so had his joy.

Something about me had disappointed him.

The flowers eventually withered. The teddy bear disappeared. The gifts became silent witnesses hanging on the walls of our house long after their purpose had died.

Years later, whenever I asked my mother what happened that day, she would only sigh and say,

"Ask your father."

But there was no father to ask.

The blame games began almost immediately.

My grandmother accused my father of abandoning the family church. Aunt Adwina insisted the marriage itself was cursed because it united people from conflicting denominations. Others blamed hidden sins. Some blamed witchcraft.

Everyone had an explanation except the one that mattered most-that I was simply a child.

Then came discussions about a solution.

The family doctor was consulted.

Even today, I struggle to call him a doctor.

Perhaps he possessed medical knowledge.

Perhaps he possessed none.

What I know is that he looked at me and saw a problem requiring removal.

"There are several options," he explained calmly....