No. 98 - The Father Figure

Dearest readers,

I’m re-engaging with the graphic memoir that got put on hold four years ago—it’s now called The Mother Lode. This is Part Three. If you’d like to see Part One and Part Two, they’re here and here.

The graphic memoir springs from my 2022 exhibit Life’s Work: A Visual Memoir, about my mother’s Lewy Body dementia and my difficult relationship with her.

What follows is not what the graphic memoir will look like. It’s just me being reinspired by the material.

Thanks!

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The last post ended with my mother and father splitting up for the second time in March 1960, two months before I was born.

How unwelcome was I, I wonder?

I don’t know where my mother was living when they broke up, but I can safely assume she was soon living with my grandmother, Maren Holm. In 1962 when I was two years old, they bought a house together with help from my mother’s siblings. My grandmother was the stay-at-home for my brother and me, and my mother worked as an accounting clerk for BC Ferries.

The house was sold in 2015, after my mother went into care. She’d been living there for 53 years.

My mother played piano—a piano I understood to have been a gift from my Grama to “cheer her up” after the break-up of her marriage. I often wondered, as she played it over the years, if it had ever worked.

My mother was unstable but luckily for me, my grandmother was a rock. I had a special relationship with Grama. She once told me that when I was little, she prayed I’d never change. We loved each other in a direct, unfettered way. There was no hiding it, and it made my mother jealous. I don’t blame her for that, but she made it impossible to have any kind of similar relationship with her. My Grama couldn’t really help me deal with my difficult mother, but she was always there and she was an example of a sane, functional human. She was strong and industrious. My Mom, not so much.

One could say she never got over her failed marriage, but was that her only issue? She was emotionally immature, bordering on narcissistic. She was prone to unpredictable outbursts and screaming fits, and she drank too much. There was always a bottle of sherry in the pantry, and it got opened the minute she was home from work. The sugar in that alone could fell a man. She was paranoid—she would mention various people who “didn’t like her”. When I was a teen she became envious of me, which was confusing and destabilizing. The term borderline personality disorder comes to mind, but what do I know? I only know that I was always internally on guard, and as a teen I would viscerally recoil in her presence. Her poison was palpable.

When she sensed this happening she’d mock me saying “Oooh, don’t touch me, I’m a star!” Like I thought myself too good for her. Or too good in general. Too big for my britches.

Grama was different. Grama made a home. The yard and garden were always maintained, the lawn was mowed, the house was clean. I still have a treasured quilt that she made in the 1960’s. When I reached teen years, there were periods where Grama would move out for a while because she and my mother didn’t get along. I can remember three different apartments she lived in, one just down the street. But she always ended up back at the house, and was living there when she died in 1995. She was 93 years old.

Love you, Grama ❤️

I don’t know what my father got up to in the aftermath of his marriage to my mother, but by the early 1970’s he was with another long-term partner in the interior of BC and had two more children: Link and Lark.

I knew that Link and Lark existed. Their mother would send their school photos to my mother and sometimes I’d stare at those photos and wonder. I could see they had their (our) father’s smile. I understood I was related to them but as I barely felt related to my father, it was all very abstract. My immediate family was my Mom, my Grama, and my brother. That’s what I knew.

The first time I met my father, he’d come to town and I was taken to my mother’s friend’s townhouse where he was presented to me. Or more likely, I was presented to him. I was fifteen. My mother and her friend left us alone in the living room. I sat in an armchair, and he sat on the floor in front of me staring up at me and asking questions. I don’t remember what was said. I only remember being extremely uncomfortable.

It seemed to be expected that I should want to get to know him. I didn’t. Or at least, I wasn’t given the chance to want to.

How long was my father in town? Long enough to break my mother’s heart again, or at least bruise it. The details are hazy, but the following letter from me to my mother in 1975 provides some clues. It’s very dramatic as only a 15-year old can be, but what stands out to me is that my feelings about the situation were clearly an inconvenience. I appealed to my mother to understand what I was experiencing, but she wasn’t having it.

The letter is transcribed at the end of this post for easier readability. There are references to my brother—I think maybe he’d left town for work—and my Aunt and Uncle from Ontario, who must have just been visiting.

I don’t remember how long this state of affairs persisted. I have a mental picture of my father standing on the porch, but no memory of him in the house—yet I write that he was “acting like a husband” to my mother. Big chunks of memory are missing.

I also met my paternal grandmother around this time, whether beforehand or afterwards I can’t be sure. She was dying of cancer in the Royal Jubilee Hospital, and I was taken to her bedside to meet her before she left this earthly plane. All I can remember is standing beside an emaciated woman in a hospital bed. I’d never seen such a thing. I’m not sure where they lived, but it wasn’t Victoria. I did not meet my grandfather.

As I mentioned in the last post, there was shame in being from “a broken home”. There must have been other kids who didn’t have both a mother and a father, but I didn’t know them. As I was getting to know my new friend Katy at the age of ten, I felt the need to tell her I had no Dad but I could only do it from inside my bedroom closet with the door closed. I couldn’t say it to her face.

My father died approximately thirty years ago—I only remember because I believe my daughter Chloe was around three years old. I have a vague memory of him calling me when Chloe was born and saying “I should send some dungarees”. No dungarees were forthcoming.

I started to become actively curious about my half-siblings in my late thirties. I did Google searches and learned a few minor things about my sister, who appeared to live in Vancouver, but nothing about my brother. I finally found my sister Lark on MySpace—a “social networking service” that pre-dates Facebook (for any babies who might be reading). I wrote her a long message explaining who I was, being careful not to make assumptions about whether or not she’d be open to meeting me. I received a long and enthusiastic reply, which was gratifying in the extreme—I’m getting shivers remembering the excited feeling it gave me. She and her husband Warren did indeed live in Vancouver, and a plan was made for me to take the ferry over and meet them.

We spent the better part of a day together, and luckily for me they were (and are) super simpatico people. What stands out about that day is entering their condo and being greeted inside the front door by a hallway lined with photos from Lark’s childhood. While I had photos of my father from the late 1950’s, Lark had photos of herself with her Dad from the early 1970’s. I had an eery feeling of “oh, so that’s where he was”. There he was, instantly recognizable, but older than my mental picture of him. Photos of him with his second set of kids: like us, a boy and a girl three years apart in age.

One of the first things Lark said to me the day I met her was that she was sorry about me not having a father growing up, but that I had “dodged a bullet”. That was startling to hear from the half-sis I was encountering for the first time. Lark and Link loved their Dad, but they had no illusions about him.

I don’t remember exactly when I met Lark and Warren, but I do know that in 2007 there was a gathering on our back deck in Victoria with me, my husband David and daughter Chloe, my brother Nels, my mother, Lark and her husband Warren, and Link and his then-girlfriend Fab (short for a name I sadly can’t remember). It was fun and friendly, but also strange. It’s the one and only time I’ve met Link and I felt instantly drawn to him, like I’d known him all my life. Lark and Link stared at my brother because he looks like his father. My mother shared some anecdotes: for example the time their/our father got so drunk he fell off the toilet. A story for the ages.

The dungaree phonecall was my last contact with my father, but I’ve seen Lark and Warren several times and am connected to Link on Facebook. I feel completely comfortable with Lark, and she’s a lovely person—I’m so glad I found her. I never had any contact with aunts or uncles on my father’s side growing up, though at least one of them lived half an hour away. I once recognized a cousin (from photographs) working in a supermarket and introduced myself, and it was awkward. How could it not be?

Blood is not always thicker than water.

If you’d like to see the two preceding installments of this story:

💥In the next Feed the Monster: a start on artwork for the graphic memoir💥

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Letter from me at age 15 to my mother

Oh, Mom

I thought that you were the only one I could talk to about it. But even you didn’t understand. Lose a brother, gain a father. Lose your favourite aunt and uncle, gain a mixed-up brain. Maybe you think that I’m making a big thing out of it, but I’m sorry, I’m really mixed-up. I’m trying to make it as little as possible. I’m not trying to get as upset as I possibly can, why would I do that?

I never had a father, never knew what it was like to have a father. But that’s okay, I never had to adjust or anything, cuz it was always that way. It was never strange to me, that’s just the way it was. I had my mother, and that was great, I don’t think that I was in any great need of some tough discipline. But suddenly—as I’m going through a changing stage in life—this father comes along, trying to act as a father to me, and is acting like a husband to you. Now, can’t you understand how it mixes me up to suddenly have this? When I’ve done without it for all these years, & certainly don’t need it now. And he pushes me, wants me to talk to him, to discuss the situation between us. I don’t want to! Please! I’m mixed-up enough as it is, without having to talk to him. Sure, he’s my father, but I hardly know him. If he hadn’t come on so strong—maybe I could have adjusted. But it’s all too sudden. Especially with coming home & Nels leaving. He may be my father, but how can I think of him that way, when he was never there for 15 years? I did without him fine, and suddenly having him now isn’t going to change anything, isn’t going to make me think of him as my “Daddy”, isn’t going to make me love him as I love you. I don’t want to talk to him about it. There’s nothing to talk about. The way I feel isn’t going to change. I haven’t got anything against him for being gone 15 years, I just think that it’s kinda late to be expecting me to think of him as my “Dad”. Can’t you please understand? I don’t know if anyone does or ever will.