The dad in a family is someone who is the male figure in a family. It is there to help the mother raise one or more children. A child will spend his whole life looking up to the big man of the house because he is the one who fixes everything, questions the first boyfriend and the one who will be there to accompany his daughter to the altar. A father is an important person in a child's life, but when he ends up not being his child anymore, he loses so much. Not having a dad for seventeen years is a difficult thing and that's what I had to deal with. Finally realizing that the day of longing was over, I felt a huge feeling of relief. When I looked into my father's lovely brown eyes for the first time, it was the most anticipated experience in seventeen years of my life. I consider my eighteenth birthday a turning point in my life. Of course, an eighteenth birthday is something special for a person because it marks the beginning of your adult life. Well, my eighteenth birthday was the day I started to realize that I would become an adult without knowing my father. It was then that I realized what my wish would be as I blew out the eighteen scorching candles. Almost a week after my birthday I started searching using online resources that I thought might help me in my search. The only information I had was his first and last name, but I didn't know that typing Peter Valdivia into the search engine would bring up nearly 2,000 names. At first I felt like giving up completely, but I knew this might be my only chance, so I pushed myself further and started searching for every name. Ultimately I eliminated people based on location and age, narrowing the search to fifty men who were a match. Of the fifty profiles provided for each man there was very little information. Some profiles provided email addresses. Then I sent emails to those showing their addresses. In the email I described my reasons for contacting them and if they felt it applied to them they could respond.