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Friday, December 21

In Shock

I was sitting quietly playing SIMS 2 on my laptop and watching TV, the boys have their 'other' brother sleeping over so they were playing noisily. The phone rings, it's Mum, I ask what's wrong because she is crying, my heart sinks and I start to get scared, I say, 'Mum what's wrong', she says, 'I don't know how to tell you this', oh god, I am so scared, I think someone else has died, 'Mum just tell me', 'Alan is alive!' 'I know', I said. 'How do you know', I said, 'I just did'. She then proceeds to tell me the rest of the story. I am in complete and utter shock!
So now that you've read this I have to tell you who on earth Alan is. Alan is my 'real' father, although I think of him as nothing more than a DNA donor. My Dad who just died adopted me and raised me as his daughter. He is the only father I have ever known or want to know! You see Alan left my mother when she was a couple of months pregnant with me, he went to have a 'good time' with his mates, he had such a good time that he got a 15 year old girl pregnant, her father forced him to marry her, thereby leaving my mother alone and pregnant with me. Mum told me that when I was 6 weeks old, she dressed me up in the prettiest clothes she could afford and took me on a long train journey so that he could see me. She didn't know that he had married the 'other woman' and she felt sure that if he could just see me he would fall madly in love with me and come back to her. He never even held me in his arms, he didn't touch me, he told Mum that he had gotten married and she left. She said she tried to get him to nurse me, but he wouldn't.
Soon after that she met Dad, and he did fall in love with me, in fact, she has often said she thinks he feel in love with me before he fell in love with her. I was his little princess! They married six months after they met and he adopted me before my second birthday. He worked very hard to make sure that I never found out that I was adopted because he never wanted me to think I was anything less than his full blooded child. They even pretended they were married the year before I was born. When I did find out, Dad was devastated, I was 21, married and pregnant with twins but he came and told me that I 'was his' and that was all there was too it, he cried and told me he never wanted me to believe I wasn't his daughter and I never did. Not for a moment, I will be his eldest daughter until the day I die! Somehow, instead of this being something terrible, my Dad found a way of making me feel even more special and I have never, not even for a moment, wanted to find 'Alan'.
I guess that you should know that Mum did want me to find him and I did some checks with Births, Deaths and Marriages and they told me what I could do to find out about him, but I never went through with it. I couldn't, I didn't need him, I had a Dad and whilst he wasn't perfect, his love for me was.
It was weird that the first thing I said to Mum was 'I know', but I really did, I have always known he wasn't dead. Alan was also Mum's cousin, although he was no blood relation, he was also adopted. So in the 70s she received a call from her Aunt to say that he had drowned in North Queensland and that she had been contacted by the police who said he had been living under an assumed name. I remember Mum was devastated, you see, I knew that he was her first love, she had told me that, just not that he was my father. He stayed married to the 'other woman' long enough to have 4 children with her, he left when she was pregnant with the youngest. Mum told me after she was told he was dead that she didn't believe it. She said they had such a close bond that she truly believed she would 'know' if he had died. I guess I always believed her.
So Alan rang a member of the family who rang another member, who rang Mum tonight. The freaky thing is that I asked Mum this afternoon when I was talking to her, had she heard from Aunty Audrey. She said, 'why are you asking me that?' I told her I didn't know, I just thought of Aunty Audrey. Apparently Aunty Audrey was desperately trying to contact Mum to tell her. Why on earth after all these years would he ring someone in the family and ask them to wish the 'family' a merry Christmas? I just don't understand why he would do that now! Mum asked me if I would mind if she contacted him, I told her that it was her business but that I wanted nothing to do with him and that he wasn't my father. I felt very defensive of Dad like I had to protect his devotion to me, that is silly because Mum knows better than anyone how he felt about me. I guess at the moment I just feel confused and that is probably normal under the circumstances.
If one good thing could come out of this though, maybe Mum will start to get a little bit better. That would be an answer to my prayers!

1 comment:

  1. Wow! Sorry but I'm a just a passerby in the Blog world. I just created a blog a few weeks ago and I frequently browse others. I do have to say though this posting very similar to what I see myself going through in the future with my daughter. I can only hope that she will defend her real father, not her biological father, but her real father, the one that's been there for her since she was 10 months old, changing diapers, waking up at night, feeding, going to school, all the special things. My husband and I have thought about how or if we would ever tell her about her DNA donor... I can frankly say that I would rather not, I know him, I saw him shut us down after being together for 2 years, I saw him get on a plane with the intent to never come back, he refused phone calls from me, and when she was 3 months old he got someone else pregnant. I will never defend him under any circumstances. My husband has been all that she knows and they adore eachother. We finished her step-parent adoption a few weeks ago and it's official, she's almost 6 though and we've been able to keep it from her. Everyone always asks when will we tell her, I them them that I would prefer not to and they gasp.... But I guess they don't realize what it all means... or how she will feel, or what if he sees her after all this and he still can care less?? How bad would that be for a child? To feel rejected from him? I don't want to do that to her, she has everything she needs, her love from me and my husband is more than enough and will never change... I commend you on taking everything the way you have. You are indeed a strong woman and you should defend your father who has past, he was the one that was there for you! :)

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