Dad

I believe that there is a difference between a father and a dad. In my opinion any male could be a father regardless of your age, race, sexuality or creed… but there is only a select few who are cut out to be a dad……………

When Christines dad left the family home, she was seventeen years old. She was the one who ultimately told him to go. She can remember the day clearly, it was July 17^th 2002. Christine sat her dad down and told him calmly that him leaving on a Friday to go to stay with his girlfriend and come back on a Monday with his tail between his legs was not an option anymore. She told him that him doing that for the past three weeks was killing her mother and younger brother. She laid the cards on the table and gave him two options; either stay and be present and give up his closeted girlfriend of two years, or go and leave her ever shrinking family grieve for their loss. He chose the latter. That day, as he left to go and live with a younger woman, Christine handed him a little photo album she had put together to remind him that he had been, and hopefully would continue to be a dad to herself and her brother.

The following eight weeks were full of disruption and disappointment. Christines parents had plans to renovate the whole of the downstairs months before, the work to commence on the 18^th. She remembers that whole summer living in what was then her bereft mother’s bedroom as the downstairs was gutted. Christine spent the evenings out with friends. When she came home, she watched Big Brother, followed by Graham Norton every night in her mother’s bedroom until her mother cried herself to sleep, her brother in her arms. That was when Christine left the comfort of a throw pillow on the ground and took out her yellow marigold gloves to scrub the kitchen floor.

She scrubbed that floor every night for those gruelling eight weeks as her father said he would bring her to the park to simply fly a kite, and then never show up. Whilst music was being pumped into her earphones via her iPod, her mother oblivious to her daughter’s nightly routine, Christine felt like she was scrubbing away her disappointment and the heartbreak over her father. Christine scrubbed that floor that was caked in dust from the builders until the house was fit to be lived in again.

Her dad, who she truly believed capable of being a dad, soon became just a father. He missed birthdays and Christmases. He missed her brother hit puberty. He missed her brother coming out as being gay and her struggle with men. The feeling of him being a dad were ultimately abolished the second he set foot over the threshold of the house and into the arms of his skinny blonde mistress.

Christine never lost hope that her dad lived somewhere in her father’s body. The only time she ever felt it however was when he held her.

As the years past, her brother refused to hear any more of his father’s broken promises and ceased from acknowledging him as anything other than a man. Christine on the other hand, desperately wanted a relationship with him, all be it different than before. Her mother had contact only through lawyers.

As Christine reached her thirties, she had contact over the phone three times a week with her dad and met him every Saturday to go plane watching, a love they had in common. She was craving his attention and, through airplanes, she was getting it. The visit always ended with her leaning over the gearbox of his car and planting her head on his shoulder. He would rest his head on hers and kissed her cheek before she left the car to go back into the house.

When covid hit, there were few planes in Dublin airport so her father started to cancel on her. He proceeded to tell her that he wasn’t going to see her anymore as it was too dangerous. He hid behind this excuse for three years. The phone calls became few and far between and Christines father soon became extinct in her life. She would send him a gift for his birthday and Christmas, him sending cards, but she felt like an outsider to his world…an inconvenience.

Three years later, out of the blue, Christine got a phone call from her father. She rolled her eyes as the phone lit up and answered it to be cordial. He requested to see her the following day. ‘Can I think about it?’ she retorted.

Christine was in hospital at the time for her mental health, which her father played a major role in. You had to book a visit through the reception desk. She spent the next two hours thinking, the cogs in her mind turning faster and faster, as was her heartbeat. She bit the bullet and rang reception to see if a visit was even possible. Her heart fluttered when she heard that there was a three o’clock appointment free. Without thinking she took it and then informed her father that the visits were all supervised because of covid and they were for only forty-five minutes. He was nonchalant about the idea that was his in the first place, but still, he said he was looking forward to seeing her.

Her rationalisation of having her first time seeing him in three years in that environment was that it would be in a familiar public place so that he couldn’t start shouting at her, something he had a habit of doing before covid. She knew she would be able to just get up and walk away if he made a snide remark and that she had the support system of the nurses when the meeting ended. She had it all planned out.

Christine sat in their designated area at five to three, her heart pounding to the music her earphones were receiving from her phone.  She was transported back to when she used to clean the kitchen floor every night. She kept looking at the clock over the lecture hall doors and wondered if she was doing the right thing.

Three o clock was suddenly upon her, as was he. Her father, a stocky man with white balding hair approached the table. She couldn’t see his full face because of the mask, but she could see his sunken eyes. He sat at the table opposite her and took her hand in his. She remembered how his hands were always very rough, but smiled under her mask at the touch of her father. The kaleidoscope of butterflies past as he looked at her with kind eyes.

Christine was asked about her brother and about what he was doing. Her brother had long covid and her father couldn’t understand that every time she told him on the phone. He saw covid as being just a bad cold. She was able to contest that by telling him that, when she was admitted to hospital two weeks prior, the ultra-fit dancer was unable to walk up the stairs. Christine had little speeches ready in her head for if her father kicked off. He started on about her thirty-three-year-old brother getting ‘a real job’, when she told him to google his son. As he read about his son on the internet and the difference he was making in the dance world, tears welled up in his eyes. He cleared his throat and took Christines hands once more.

They talked about mundane things, the type of things you talk about with someone who you hadn’t seen in three years. The time went by so quickly. When he, and all the other visitors were asked to leave, he locked eyes with Christine. Both of them started to tear up. The table was situated in the corner and although hugs weren’t allowed, they sneaked one in. Her father wrapped his arm around Christines, and she wrapped her arms around his waist, landing her head on his shoulder. He rested his head on hers and kissed her cheek as he said goodbye. That to Christine was more of a hello, a hello to her dad.