Where I Come From...Where I'm Going: Part 3:

The Father’s Story

I love my Dad and I’ve never told him. I don’t think I ever will. I would like to, but I don’t feel I can, because I’m not strong enough to hear his reply.

I called my Dad two weeks ago to say hi, see how he is, ask what my step-mother would like for her 50th. He told me he’d like to have MB and I at his place up North some time. I told him “sure”. I always tell him “sure” and then I never hear back. I wonder if I’ll ever be able to visit without feeling as if I’ve guilted him into something that he didn’t really want to do. But I should be the guilty one.

I ruined my Dad’s life.

No, really I did.

I was produced at the worst possible time, ever. Not only to young parents, that much happens every day, but I was created in the middle of my Dad’s M.B.A. He had to quit (so I’ve heard) to support my mother and I. All he wanted in life was his degree and to be pretty much left alone, and I took both away from him. I was so unplanned, so inconvenient, that my mere presence pushed him away from us. I was a shock to his system, a reminder of responsibility and duty…can anyone imagine the effect on a 23 year old with his whole life ahead of him? I don’t remember him leaving, I don’t remember him coming back. I have very few memories of him at all. He took us to New York while he worked, brought us back to Toronto. Left us again. I remember him coming to our front door one day and knocking, which struck me as odd even at 6 years old. He had come to “pick us up”. I had no idea that he didn’t live with us anymore, I guess it was too much for me to comprehend. That’s when I noticed he was wearing glasses. I asked him why he was wearing them. He told me that he had had glasses for 6 months…I simply hadn’t seen him in that long.

Thank God that our memories are selective when we are children. If there were fights, I don’t remember them. I don’t remember Dad moving to Vancouver. I don’t remember missing him. But I can think back and see my life then as idyllic…a beautiful playhouse made of wood in the backyard, a dog, cats, bunnies and a sandpit. A park across the street, friends who loved me and a family that adored us. I don’t think of anything being missing. But I lost it all anyway.

My Dad never fought to keep us. We were moving 3000 miles away and he didn’t seem care. Good riddance probably. The last day at school I got to play computer games while the children set up a surprise party for me. I had a Care Bear cake and never felt as popular again. Dad remarried, we went to England. Every summer a stewardess would put a tag around our necks, “Unaccompanied Minors”, and we would be put on a plane, spend the summer, be flown back home. I adored that time, and would talk for weeks and weeks about Canada, Toronto, what we did there, how exciting it all was. I’m surprised my Mum didn’t belt me. Back in Canada, I had a whole family, Dad would take time off work and go to ballgames with us, and we’d spend endless days trying to water ski and toast marshmallows by the fireplace with our grandparents.

And this went on until I was 16. Then my world fell apart.

After another fight with my mother, I told her I was going to live with my Dad. An empty threat. She told me that I could do as I pleased, but before I left, she was going to tell me about my father. And tell she did. She told me that my father had cheated on her, not once, but multiple times until she couldn’t take it anymore. And then, when she initiated the divorce, my father threatened to sue for sole custody of us unless she lowered the child support payment she was asking for. Some things are more important than money, and my mother dropped the support well below minimum until the threat was rescinded. Every support cheque was a struggle to receive, every excuse was given for missing Christmas or birthday presents. I wasn’t the same person by the time that conversation was over. I couldn’t understand why he didn’t want us.


My father makes a lot of money. A lot. He is financially motivated in everything he does…it is his career, it is how he judges people, it is how he measures himself. I understood at an early age that I could never gain his love in the traditional sense, so I started to equate money and more importantly, time, with his love. He loved me if he took time off work to take us to the cottage, he loved me if he paid for my school uniform, he loved me if he let me visit him in his office. But it was always a power struggle to earn his “love”. The support cheques were a prime example…he wanted us all to know that he was in control of the situation, he was the power player. Nothing was easily or freely given.

I thought it was just how he was, how he is and will always be.

But then he remarried for a third time, had a baby. The love of his life. Every wish fulfilled. I remember arriving at college in the States and having to buy books for my first course. $180 was the tab. I only had $200 to my name, so I phoned my Dad to ask if I could have a little extra that month. He told me “no”. But I needed the books or I would fail the course, so I bought them. Tried to make do. It wasn’t as if I could work while I was there, if I’d had a work visa I would have, but I didn’t. I had to live off $20 for the month because he wanted to teach me the value of a dollar. I lost 10 pounds when everyone else was gaining the freshman fifteen. But it was nice to hear him talk about building his second home, and buying that BMW. How about skiing lessons for the child, or horse riding? No, she decided that she liked snowboarding better, you should see all of her new fancy gear. The old stuff? Oh we just threw it out, no good to us. What about the new private school, no expense spared?

I’ll never forgive him for that month. He can never make it up to me for that.

I wouldn’t replace my life experience for the world. No money could have given me what I have learned by myself, through struggle and through mistakes. But to think that there is someone out there who could have taken away my pain at that point, could of, but didn’t…well, I just became a little sadder.

I talked to him the other day about my new job. I was so thrilled, so excited that I am HERE and that I’d made it! He was happy for me, offered some advice, listened to me gush over it all. Then I turned to him for the only real advice I can request from him in good conscience…I asked him how to start a new savings plan. He laughed and told me “You make as much money every year as I spend on boarding for our horses…how on earth can I advise you on such a small amount of money?”.

My life is small to him, my life is insignificant. I am an amusement in his life, a reminder of younger, more foolish times. I have come to a point of sad acceptance that it is not worth worrying about any more. So what if his daughter gets everything her heart desires? I am not her, I am much more than that. If MB decides to propose, so what if my Dad laughs in sheer mirth when he asks for my hand? So what if he says he won’t contribute to my wedding because he is too busy saving for his daughter’s $100,000 matrimonial social event of the season? So what if I still want his acceptance and his love. I cannot change who he is, just as I cannot change the fact that I am alive, I am here, and I am his. So what?