[Harold W. Ruane]

I am strongly considering sending a little holiday greeting to touch base and keep lines of communication open. His reply from back in May was a good one (I will copy it below for reference). It seems to me that it is important to touch base to demonstrate that I am in this for the long haul. My dilemma is that I did say that I would wait to hear from him.

I would appreciate words of advice. While I want not to be intrusive, I also don't want it to come off as some generic Hallmark holiday greeting. I would appreciate any sort of template or etiquette suggestions.
Thanks and all the best,
HWR

I am cautiously overjoyed. My take is that this is a a very successful first contact. I plan on a short acknowledgement/response. I want to respect his space -- I also want to alleviate as many fears as I can. In that he does not know me from Adam and has not had a positive dad experience, I want to assure him that he has little to fear from me. I want to assure him that I am a good guy. It's a tricky balancing act. Does anybody have any thoughts or guidance? Below is his response -- I am very impressed, he is only 19 y.o.. His mom did a good job.

Well you hit the nail on the head when you said "this correspondence may come as something of a surprise". When I first read it on Monday it knocked me flat on my (pardon my french) ***. I apologize for not responding right away. I felt it best to read and re-read this, and allow myself some time to pray and think about this. Because its pretty heavy stuff!

But I really cant figure out what to think of this. There were about a million different thoughts and emotions going through my head when I first read this. And there still are. But the first thing or statement I want to say is that please don't beat yourself up or feel guilty or anything like that. (that may be an impossible thing for you given the circumstances), but I've never been one to hold a grudge or anything like that. I'm a quick forgive.

But at the moment, I really don't feel ready to go and meet up. There's alot of things coming to and end in my life right now like school and alot of things just getting started. So I feel like meeting you right away would obviously be a really emotional thing, but besides that really just stress me out. Thats not meant to be taken offensive, you could probably imagine the predicament I'm in right now.

I do at some point in the future want to meet you. And whatever happens after that happens. Since I was a kid I've always wished I had a father. But without one, I've learned and adapted to life without one. So I don't know how exactly I would react to meeting you.

More on that, I don't know if you know, but my mom did get married. But they got divorced like 4 or 5 years ago. And when they first got married I was just super ecstatic about having a dad. So for the first part of their marriage I immediately accepted him as my dad. But he turned out to be a real ******* (again pardon my french) So in no way now do I view him to be my father. My life without him has been much easier, stress free, and frankly just all around happier.

So as you could imagine, I sort of have some deep resentment towards dads or fathers in general. Not specifically you or that other dude, theres just a negative connotation for me with the word dad or father. I didn't have one in the beginning, and when I gave my heart and love to one, and he walked all over it. It's kind of like I'm 0 for 2 with dads.

Taking that into consideration, like a said earlier, I've learned to live and be happy without a father figure in my life. Thats not to say I've accepted and enjoyed the influence of other male figures in my life, just the whole dad at home family blah blah thing. So thats why I don't want to jump right into whatever this will become.

But I do appreciate your message and your respectfulness and the courteous nature of the message.

I'm going to be gone most of the summer serving in an orphanage in Mexico so I won't be able to correspond during the summer. But sometime after that (I'm not sure when) I think meeting you will be a positive and worthwhile thing.
hwr