A First Time Father At 80

Joel is one of those guys who likes hunting and fishing. A “man’s man” in a time when that breed of animal is almost extinct.. A confirmed bachelor, he has a small town medical practice in the Vermont’s Northeast Kingdom close to the Canadian border. Dr. Joel still has his family practice at age 80..

Folks say Joel and I used to be friends before either of us could remember being friends. My family, summer visitors in Vermont living in New Jersey during the winter while Joel’s people endured the brutal Vermont winters, being all year round residents.

Life’s circumstances made it so Joel and I took different paths. He, a lifelong confirmed bachelor having completed medical school at the University of Vermont, became a rural doctor in his home state. I put in the time at the University of Delaware majoring in football, eventually marrying (twice) having three sons, a daughter and a real estate business in Philadelphia.

Absorbed in our different worlds we hadn’t seen each other since a year or two before the COVID pandemic. We kept touch by phone and managed to talk every month or so. We were both men who thrived on routine in our lives so consequently novelty in our phone conversations suffered. We just enjoyed the other guy’s voice I suppose.

Old friends literally, in every way possible.

This time when the phone rang, Joel had some real news.

Apparently he, a confirmed bachelor, got a phone call informing him he was the father of a 62-year-old daughter.

Apparently, a woman now living in Boston with a husband claimed she was his issue. She found this info from Ancestry.com, a 2020 Christmas present from her husband.

She went to great lengths to track Joel down through his older brother (92) who had emigrated to the United Kingdom many years ago. Joel and his brother haven’t spoken in years and his brother apparently hadn’t seen the need to tell him of the woman’s call. The first notice Joel had that he was a father was delivered by his purported daughter.

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