My dad who was never in my life reached out wanting a relationship. Should I respond?

My dad was never really in the picture. My mom raised me on her own and never talked badly about him but never really talked about him at all which somehow felt worse than if she had. I stopped expecting to hear from him a long time ago. Then a day ago he texted me out of nowhere. Said he'd been thinking about me, that he knew he hadn't been there, that he wanted to try to have some kind of relationship if I was open to it. When I first read it I didn't even know what I felt. It wasn't just one thing, it was like everything hit at the same time. I was angry but also kind of curious and sad in a way I really wasn't expecting. Part of me wanted to just ignore it and move on but another part of me had questions I'd been carrying around for years without anywhere to put them. I also had to think about what I actually wanted from him at this point in my life, not what I might have wanted when I was younger but what I actually needed now as someone who had figured out how to be okay without him in the picture. I realized that whether I responded or didn't respond was something I wanted to actually choose deliberately and not just let happen by default because I was angry or didn't know what to do. Both were real options and both deserved to actually be thought through instead of me just sitting on it until it went away. Talking it through helped me see that I didn't have to figure out everything all at once. I didn't have to decide whether to forgive him or meet him or shut the door completely in a single text back. We agreed the best next step was to send something honest that didn't commit me to anything. Just that I got his message, that I needed some time to think about what I wanted, and that I'd reach out when I was ready. That felt like something I could actually send without feeling like I was giving too much or closing something off before I'd really decided how I felt about it.