s I watch my daughter pull herself along the couch, toward the cat. I can’t help but wonder if my father
did the exact same thing with me. It’s strange and sad that as parents, we have intense and meaningful relationships with our babies that they’ll never remember.
The beginning years of any relationship are the most intense, the most exciting.
When you get to know each other and find out what dynamic you have as a pair. As I think about my relationship with my father, I wonder what kind of man he was when I was a born. What our dynamic was in those formative years. I’ve seen photographs of us together, me on his shoulders: smiling and laughing, him doing the same. Did he love me as I love my daughter? - To the extent that I, freely, gave my identity away for her. Did I love him? – As my daughter, unreservedly, loves me. I will never know the man who changed my diapers and rocked me to sleep but I know a few things.
By all accounts, I changed his life. He was 38 when my parent’s adopted me, they thought they’d never have children. They got a call from their niece who was at the hospital but didn’t want a child. Nine hours later: they were parents. My father went from being a man with no real responsibilities or worries, to a dad, in a day. He had never been happier. He told me that when my mother brought me home, he cried. Coming from a man of that hard generation, an
admission of vulnerability is not insignificant.
My earliest memories of my father were of a man who went to work and came home - tired. He used to fill the hallway to my room with the aroma of bacon, on weekend mornings. He enjoyed working with tools and he liked to take me fishing. Those are my earliest childhood memories and I must have been, at least, seven when they happened. That’s seven years of a relationship, gone and forgotten. To the person who remembers, that has to be devastating.
It seems like every time I see my dad, he has questions for me. He asks me if I remember people who used to visit us. He asks me if I recall going somewhere or doing some specific thing. Sometimes, I nod my head and pretend to hear bells. Other times I just, flat out, say no. It wasn’t until I saw my daughter by the couch that I realized how hurtful that must have for him. I know that she’ll never remember this moment but I will because Kora has just learnt how to pull herself along an object, while standing, and I am immensely proud of her. Seven years.
The last time I was home, Dad asked me if I remembered something that was obviously a big moment in our relationship, to him. I can’t remember what the question was but I can still see his eyes. I thought I had seen a flash of pain in them. I now know that when I said ‘no’, it hurt him deeply.
A
forgotten
fathers
By Matthew Wright.
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