Fathers

A lot of people seem to take it very personally when their fathers leave. My mother (rightly) indoctrinated me from an early age into believing that my father was a great, kind man, who simply left because he had to – because he fell in love with another woman – but he loves me very much and he didn’t want to leave me; he would never want to leave his child.

I believed it, and always thought that kids who took their fathers leaving to heart were a bit silly, a bit over-emotional – what’s the problem? He didn’t want to leave you, he loves you, it’s just an adult thing, sometimes people have to leave.

Really? It’s only lately – I suppose as I grow up a bit, and think more about my life and the future – that I really find myself questioning this idea.

My father left when I was 2. And in all honesty, he’d been having an affair for probably at least a year before that. How can this be explained? How can this be framed as ‘normal’ behaviour? What possesses an individual who has just been blessed with a beautiful, healthy baby, to do anything that would harm the future of that child or their own ability to be with that child? Regardless of what problems you might feel your marriage has, how do you leave a child so young?! Your first and only child: surely that would fill you with such excitement, so many dreams for its future, that having an affair would be the very furthest thing from your mind??

I suppose another reason it was never too hard for me was simply because I was so young when he left, and in addition, him ‘leaving’ was never a real event. He always worked abroad anyway – the only memory of him that I have from my first house is speaking to him on the telephone, asking him when he was coming home to England, knowing even at that age that his answer was to be taken with a grain of salt. So my life never really changed significantly when he ‘left.’

But I see how my father behaves now, with my half sister and half brother, and I start to see what I missed.

I was fanatical about football. I supported the team my father supported, my entire room was covered in posters, I collected all the premier league football stickers and completed my album every year. The one time my dad played football with me in the park remains in my memory, crystal clear, because it was so special to me. I see a photograph he took of me that day on his mantelpiece every time I visit his house. Kind of sad that playing in the park with your daughter is such an ‘event’ that you have a photograph to commemorate it. Not here’s the once-in-a-lifetime event of my daughter’s first communion. Or the once-in-a-lifetime event when she trekked across a sand dune in the Namib desert. No… this is the once-in-a-lifetime event of going to the park with my daughter I live one hour away from.

My sister has never really liked football. I mean, she likes it – she supports a team – but when my walls were covered in football players, hers were covered in music icons, band members. At the age I was setting out cones in my back garden and dribbling the ball in and out of them, she’s sitting in her room with her ipod and hair straighteners. We’re just different. Yet, my father got her involved in football from a young age. He found her a girls’ football team, and when its future was threatened, he stepped in and became the manager and coach of the team. With my brother, it’s not so difficult to find well-managed boys’ teams, so my father doesn’t have to do any of that with him, but he does attend every single one of his matches without fail. I can’t even put into words what I would have done to have been able to play on a team instead of on my own in my back garden, let alone have my father present at every match.

So now, when people get sad, and bitter, and feel like their father left them at a young age… well, he did. Yes, he left for another woman, not for another child. But he left you. His love for you was not sufficient enough to make him want to stay with you, his life was not fulfilled by your existence. He loves you, but he doesn’t love you enough.