Father's Day

This photo is the only photo I have of ‘me and my dad’. I don’t look at it very often, but when I do I am confronted with mixed emotions.

At first I see the little girl I once was. Innocent. Pure. I then see this little girl safe in the arms her father.  Cradled, nurtured and protected from the elements. Then I remember that photographs can be deceiving.

It was not long after this photo was taken that dad left us.  Perhaps he was already in love with the other woman. Perhaps he had made plans to see her later that night. Perhaps.

I do not remember the day he left, my sisters do. I have no memories of feeling abandoned, rejected…that came later. I was very young. However, just because I do not remember does not mean I didn’t feel anything. I must have.

Did I ask mum where he was? I don’t know what she must have said to this little blonde girl. Was I sad? Confused? There must have been an incredible amount of emotion around me at that time. My sister remembers mum throwing his clothes into an old suitcase and screaming. Crying. Where was I? Was I there in the room? Has my body kept this scene locked away somewhere safe?

Many years have come and gone. In my teens I was a ball of anger. I hated everything and everyone. I hated myself the most. I resented my father, his new life, his new wife. I had witnessed my mother’s struggle and felt such anger towards my father that it often made me crazy. I drank, excessively.

I used to buy my mother Father’s Day cards, right up until her death. She taught me to drive, she taught me to change the fuses in the meter box of our home, to change a tyre. She was my everything and he, he was a photograph.

But time is a healer. It is through my commitment to my own healing that I have made peace with my feelings of rejection. I have long since stopped asking myself what was wrong with us and why didn’t he want us. I have forgiven him for being only what he could be, I have forgiven myself for the years of masochism and self-abuse.

As Father’s Day approaches I get out this old photo and I look at it with love. I remember his big black boots and how I used to think he was a giant. I remember the smell of oil and petrol from his mechanic’s uniform and I have a vague and fleeting memory of a mandolin – music.

It is enough.

Where ever you may be out there Dad, I wish you well. May you have peace and happiness.