Lies

    I lied to Jax about my biological father.  I don't lie often, but about my parents, I did. 
    That's the thing about telling a lie, it's too easy.  A lie goes down smooth, like honey.  The truth sometimes has the sharp edges of hurtfulness and inconvenience that are hard to swallow.
      I told him that my parents met and fell in love in college, and I was born two years after they were married.  Thirty-three years later and they're still happy.  Sweet and simple.  Like Honey.
      The truth was that instead of college at eighteen, my Mother was juggling diaper changes, 4am bottles, and a 40 hours a week at The Burger Barn.  My Father was living in Iowa with his brand new wife who was seven months pregnant.  Mom says that one year earlier, when she told him she was pregnant, he told her he was too young to be a Dad.  I've never met him, and Mom never even really talked about him.  When I was a kid, I knew his name, Joseph Anderson, and I had a picture of him and my mom at their junior prom.  That was all I knew about dear old Dad. 
    My Mom met Tom when I was ten.  Tom was a highschool geometry teacher with dark brown eyes and a soft voice.  He was quiet and kind and Mom smiled more when he was around.  He took us to the movies, to baseball games, and he liked to cook us dinner.  A few months after they started dating, Tom asked me how I would feel about being his daughter.  They've been married for eighteen years now.
    My mom reminds me too often how lucky I was to have Tom come into my life.  I think she wants to make me forget how sad I was for the ten years before he did.  It has taken a lot of years of Tom's fathering to take the edge off the pain of a little girl who watches other Daddies pick up their daughters from school, of not having anyone come to bring-your-father to school day, or never hearing someone call her daddies-little-girl.
    So when Jax asked me about my parents, I lied.  I always did, I liked it better than the truth.