Two things are prompting this post.
A friend of mine just lost her husband. The four of us went to the visitation last night. He was only 41, and died of a sudden heart attack. They have two young children together. I haven’t been able to stop thinking about her, about the children, and what it’s going to be like for them from now on.
I don’t have a father. I haven’t for a long time. My father isn’t dead but he isn’t in my life at all. My children have never met him. They stopped asking about their other grandfather a long time ago. When they were small we explained his absence in terms of distance. He’s far away, we’d explain. But as they got older they began to understand that distance can be conquered by a long car ride, or even by airplane, as long as you were willing and had the time and the money. It always troubled me, having to explain that the distance is more than just a physical one. They didn’t understand how fathers and daughters could ever get to this point.
But doesn’t he want to meet us, mummy?
I said there were two things.
At 2:00 a.m. yesterday morning I woke to the phone ringing. I always panic when this happens. My first thoughts as I fumble clumsily for the phone on the other end of my nightstand are always who’s sick and what is this bad news going to be?
It was my half-sister. She’s ten years older than I am, a daughter from my mother’s first marriage and lives in Prague. She called to wish me a Merry Christmas, but I’m always too stunned to speak intelligently when she does this.
I lay awake for a long time afterwards, my heart racing.
My parents immigrated from what was then Czechoslovakia in 1967. They would have been about 24. A second marriage for both. They both had a child from their first marriage. I believe there were custody issues which forced them to leave their daughters behind. This is a whole story in itself. It is never discussed, but I can’t help but wonder, as a parent, how could you leave a child behind?
They settled in Toronto and I was born a few years later. We moved to the suburbs when I was two or three. They wanted me to grow up in a nice place with a backyard.
My father worked as a radio/tv repairman at a store called downtown called Kromer radio. The commute was a long one. I remember my mother and I waiting up for him to come home. Some nights he’d arrive just at my bedtime.
He was a fun dad. But it’s easy to be “fun dad” when kids are small. I remember him sneaking and eating the boiled egg slices off my salad (I hated them) and drawing pictures in my bread and butter.
He eventually quit Kromer, partnered with some former co-workers, and opened his own store in Brampton. I remember my mother and I visiting him while he was fixing the interior and building the walls. We’d bring quarter chicken dinners from Swiss Chalet. The noise from the drill and the nail guns was so loud I’d have to cover my ears. My mother told me to open my mouth so the sound wouldn’t damage my hearing. (Go figure.)
I worked at the store as a teenager and often walked there after school. VCRs were new and we were one of the few places renting movies. At the time, the store did sales and service of VCRs, stereos, and televisions. This is before the age of the big box electronics store, before the quality and the selling price of these items came down so low it didn’t make sense to repair them anymore.
My Canadian family consisted of just the three of us. We had no other family in the country. Still don’t. It’s still just the three of us, although as I mentioned, my father is so far out of the picture he might as well be a stranger.
I remember the arguments. Sometimes I’d lie awake at night listening to them scream at each other.
When I was in high school my father started to change. He quit smoking and started taking better care of himself. He started going to the gym and went on a radical kind of diet, a kind of diet which, at the time, was perceived as really weird. His new way of eating consisted entirely of meat and vegetables (sound familiar?).
I couldn’t figure out why my mother couldn’t support the change.
When I was in second year at university they told me they were getting a divorce. I was living in Ottawa by this time. It was during exams. My mother called to let me know what was going on. My friends were sad for me. But I wasn’t sad at all. I knew the history. If they were so unhappy, why stay together?
I don’t know what went on after I left home. No one ever told me and I don’t ask, but something went on. There was a long, drawn-out divorce. The house I grew up in was sold, and only the lawyers profited. I don’t think my father took anything with him when he left. My mother kept the furniture, taking everything, right down to the ice cube trays in the fridge.
My mother ended up with the deed to our little place outside Peterborough, where she lives to this day.
He hit rock bottom, telling everyone his tale of woe. His co-workers worried about him, a lot. He was a wreck.
It was around that time he met the lady who was to become his second wife. She was a born-again Christian. She helped him find Jesus. It was thanks to her, and Jesus, that he rose up and became a new man.
It was a little unusual, considering the history of religion in our family. It was always my mother who gave a little prayer at Christmas or Easter while my father sat quietly not saying anything. I am, apparently, Catholic. I was baptised. I don’t remember my parents ever taking me to church. For some reason I was sent with the neighbors every once in awhile, I don’t know, when I needed a refresher or something.
That’s why it was a surprise when I heard that my father had found religion. But I was happy for him. He was thrown a lifeline and he took it. Even though I wasn’t a very religious person I supported whatever it was that brought him happiness in his life. I have no issue with religion. I have my own beliefs, but more importantly (I think) I believe people have the right to have their own beliefs.
I went to his wedding. It was back in Brampton at a public garden. I liked his bride. She was a very nice lady.
I remember a gust of wind blowing off her wedding hat – a white, wide-brimmed, frothy concoction. He ran after it, laughing, as it tumbled across the parking lot.
I went to visit them one time at their home. I realized his conversion was bigger than I had thought. I remember being surprised to hear they were hosting a bible study during my visit (I didn’t include myself in that). I also remember a very long and uncomfortable dinner in which it was explained to me about the various sorts of people who were going to burn in hell. I don’t want to get into specifics, but it included people I count as friends and know are good people.
I lived in Ottawa, and they lived in the countryside outside of Brampton so I didn’t have a lot to do with them. My father started mailing me various religious propaganda that he thought would somehow educate me: videos, books, etc. One brochure outlined why his religion is the “right” one, and exactly why the rest of the world’s religions are “wrong.” And every conversation and note implied, directly and otherwise, that I was going to hell if I didn’t change my evil ways and didn’t take Jesus into my heart.
What evil ways? I’m just a regular kid, aren’t I?
My Philosophy 101 as well as my comparative religion classes kicked in. I believe people have a right to believe in whatever religion they want. There is no right or wrong, as long as people aren’t hurt in the process.
He didn’t want to hear my views. I was wrong. Everyone was wrong too. He was right, exceptionally right.
Does that mean, father, that the child who lives and dies in a nomadic Asian tribe and has never been exposed to a world outside his own is destined to go to hell because he hasn’t taken Jesus into his heart? Even if he’s never heard of Jesus?
There is a reason I don’t write anything about religion here at the Fishbowl. It is highly divisive and I don’t want hurt feelings – mine or yours. I don’t want to get into a debate about this – I’ve had enough of that to last me a lifetime. It’s not why I’m posting this now. Nasty or hurtful comments will be deleted.
I was in my last year at Carleton. I was living in a large, two-bedroom apartment with a male roommate in a perfectly platonic way. (How we came to be living together is a whole other post – a good one. But I will say that he and I were strangers when we moved in and became very good friends. He and his family have since become like “real” family to me.)
Mark and I were dating and he dropped me off at the apartment. He drove away. As I walked in I realized all the lights were on and the back door was swinging wide open. I was silently cursing my roomate (“I can’t believe he left the door open!”) until I realized that my laptop was missing. And my camera. And my bike. And my backpack. My bedroom window was jimmied open. We’d been robbed.
I ran around the house screaming bloody murder. I have never been so angry in my whole life. I remember running down to the basement, wildly looking to see if anyone was hiding in the corners. I would have throttled them.
And then I called 911. And hung up. And called back again. I wasn’t sure if this was the number to call.
And because I felt wrung out and sad and exhausted I called my father. I needed family to talk to, someone to support me. I can’t remember what was said. I talked, he listened, and I eventually hung up the phone. A few minutes later the phone rang. It was him. He said he’d discussed it with his wife and they both agreed it was my fault my roommate and I were robbed. He told me I was a sinful person and that this was my punishment.
I was upset.
Some time later he called to tell me he and his wife were selling their house and moving.
Oh really, that’s nice. Where to?
There was a heartbeat of uncomfortable silence.
He told me he wasn’t going to disclose his new address because of the fact that I was in kahoots with my mother, oh, and had I decided to take Jesus into my heart yet?
And so, that was pretty much the end of our relationship. I could no longer accept his continuous insistence that I was destined to burn in hell for all eternity. He had stopped being a father to me long before.
He wasn’t invited to my wedding. ETA: It’s funny how I rearranged this detail in my mind. He didn’t come to the wedding but he was invited, and declined to attend because my mother was going to be there and “we weren’t a family anymore.”
I am fairly certain I told him when Emma was born. He emailed me at work during the ice storm of 1998 to make sure we we okay. But that’s pretty much it. I’m not sure if he knows of Sarah’s existence. Someone has probably told him. Maybe he reads the blog. I don’t know.
I am torn. On one hand I want to forgive and forget. He is family. But on the other hand I’m afraid he hasn’t changed, and I can’t afford to take on the stress in my life or expose his brand of religion to the girls.
I’m not sure if I’m going to leave this post online or not. Today I say yes, for now.
