My Father

January 20, 2011

My Father

There’s a saying that says “as a child, you love your parents, as an adult you judge them and then you learn to forgive them”. I think that’s the right order in which these events occur. I have huge issues with my father. Writing this, my heart is pained with sadness and there’s an ache in my throat waiting for anguish tears to release it, but I am through crying. I already exhausted that outlet and it didn’t do me one damn good. I cried hot and angry tears, I cried woe-is-me tears, cried wish-I-wasn’t born tears (yes, some days it was that bad) cried because I didn’t feel loved or wanted at times and cried because I felt powerless. I was done crying. I’m sure my feelings are not unique but they are mine and I own them.

My father was a good provider, meaning, he made sure I had a roof over my head, clothes on my back and food in my belly. Made sure I went to school, church on Sundays and he did all that was required of him and nothing more. He was a very strict disciplinarian and then some. There were no gray areas in any situation where he was concerned. It was black and white and that was that. You weren’t allowed to have an opinion; he would either argue with you or ridicule you. My reason for childhood mistakes, skirmishes and errors as I stammered my way through whatever explanations that makes sense to me at the time was “excuses” not reasons. I was not a confident child and I was shy but I learned pretty earlier on from observations where I stood in relation to my sister who was brown-skinned and had what we called ‘royal’ hair (mixture of Indian and tightly curled negro hair). She was a lot more talkative and socially aware than I was and that was advantageous to her and her relationship with him. Between them both I felt like the weed in the garden. Pretty much treated that way too. He didn’t attend my graduation ceremony. Why? Because I didn’t invite him!! I lived with him, he sent me to school for God sakes!! It was a given that my parent would be there proud and beaming like every other parent. Or so I believed! That tells me he was either disappointed that I wasn’t like his star pupil or he just didn’t care!!!

I was a decent student in most subjects but I stunk at mathematics!! I was very bad! To this day I do not have a great relationship with numbers. I went to evening classes when I was at primary school, doing extra lessons in math and still I just didn’t get it. It was frustrating and embarrassing. Took me twenty odd years to learn that I am dyslexic where numbers are concerned. (I know dyslexic is used incorrectly here as it relates to reading. Lexica I know relate to speech, but I am not sure what the correct term/word for numbers is). Anyway my problem was that I transpose (change the order of) numbers. Back then I was “just a dunce and my head tough” this despite the fact that I would pass all my other classes, no problem, but barely scrape through a math exam. I tried so hard one year at exam time and came in the top three, out of thirty plus students in the class. I was so proud of myself knowing how difficult math was for me at the time. Well, daddy dearest looked at me and told me something I had never forgotten to this day. He said, “If you can place in the top three, you should have been first”! I was crushed! No job well-done, no congratulations, nope, that would have been too easy for him to make me feel good knowing how hard I worked. I learned from that. I now tell my son everyday how proud of him I am, especially when I know he tries his hardest at whatever he finds difficult. Guess I should be thankful for his teaching me that.

I went through so many painful experiences with my father too numerous to mention. Painful years that could have made me a different person but thankfully there were always ‘angels’ in my life that were there for me  even though I wasn’t aware of them as such at the time. He wasn’t always selfish and self-centered. He introduced us to cultural event like going to the theater to watch plays on stage. We weren’t allowed to watch entertainment shows on television during the week. We were allowed to watch the news and boring interview programs like JIS (Jamaica Information Service) API (Agency for Public Information) among others. At that time though, we were well versed on current events of the day. Ask any question regarding the events of the day and we knew the answers. On weekends we could watch whatever we chose. He was a hard man, not very affectionate. I feared him most of my years growing up with him. It was very hard conversing with him even lightly. I felt I was judged, almost always negatively. I am over that now. I love him because I am supposed to in a Godly way I think, and I am grateful he didn’t put me out in the streets, but I don’t like him at all!

I haven’t spoken to him in years. I haven’t seen him in years. I am now in the forgiving stage I guess. I decided to do so from a distance. Some days it’s easy, some days it’s not.

It takes work to forgive someone and I am still a work in progress. I wondered why he was so hard with me, why it seemed he hated me so much. I realized his childhood was not a bed of rose. He probably didn’t feel love, wanted or needed either. Which is why, if that was the case, why would he subject his child to such harsh treatments knowing what it felt like? Why did he try so hard to crush my self-esteem? Why did he try so hard to crush my sense of self? During a dinner conversation as an adult he once told me I wasn’t conceived out of love! (Ok, so most children from Caribbean countries were not born from a union of love, but why did he feel the need to verbalize that?) No matter how you feel about your child, why would you tell your child such a thing, unless you were a cruel egomaniac with a heart of stone! I just don’t understand. I know I need to forgive him, knowing that he couldn’t have known any better, because it is said “if you know better, you do better” right? He could not have known any better. I always held him in high esteem that he was a smart and intelligent man, but I was wrong and I came to the conclusion that he just didn’t know any better. A huge let-down. It was that simple, he just didn’t know any better. I need to believe that. He had no emotional quotient, no empathy where I was concerned.

I need to thank him that I don’t treat my child the way I was treated. I need to thank him that I love and demonstrate to my son everyday my love for him. I need to thank him that I gave my son a voice to express himself without fear. I didn’t have one. I need to thank him for the fact that I am helping my child to develop a healthy sense of self and self-esteem because he made sure I didn’t have any of those qualities. He tried, gave it his all. He lost.

I am learning to forgive him and thanking him from a distance, because I need to and because I can. It takes too much energy to do otherwise. I am doing it one day at a time.

So to my well meaning Canadian mom who protects, encourages, and loves me unconditionally, who taught me to love myself, who made me realize I was special and important, who has accepted me for me and to my loving and gentle sister who worries about me and my relationship with my father and told me repeatedly to call him and forgive him… I am good. I am learning to forgive him… one day at a time. That’s good enough for me for right now. I was once told “you can forgive someone but you don’t have to be bosom buddies with them”. One of the best advice I’ve ever gotten!