An Unseasonal Gift

For the first time in forever I have the house to myself, my studio/office is tidy and ordered and I have a full day stretching ahead with only my own agenda to fill. This much anticipated day should be blissful and productive and yet I am uneasy and agitated, not sitting comfortably within my skin.

My father was here over the weekend. It was the first time he had visited for over a year, the last time having been less than wildly successful, at least from my perspective.

It’s hard to put my finger on why I find his presence so unsettling. He is a most beloved parent and I look forward to seeing him with a keen longing, but once he is here I am gripped with a profound sense of uneasiness; I can feel the return of an earlier incarnation of myself wake up from where I had carefully put her to bed and much as I want to keep the peace and have an enjoyable couple of days I cannot help but agitate and poke and I find myself wanting to let him know, in ways both direct and subtle, that he did not do such a sterling job in my earlier years. I am further provoked into churlish awkwardness and resentment when he mentions how well his other two, much younger daughters are doing, with such foolish fondness and blissful unawareness of the gaping differences in the continuing care lavished upon them versus the relative neglect and difficulties I suffered as a result of his and my mother’s appallingly handled divorce and his subsequent remarriage and total immersion into his new partner’s family.

It has a funny Cinderella vibe about it. But in this case Dad and his new family got to go to the ball in fancy frocks, having a fabulous time while I drifted around like a grumpy pumpkin, sweeping my resentment under the carpet where it moulded and festered growing feet and a dark soul, waiting to bite everyone when they came home to drink merry cups of cocoa and congratulate themselves on their cheery good fortune. Even now, decades later they are still jollying along in their prosperous way attending prestigious colleges, having high-flying jobs, being Busy and Important and making plans for large family Christmases – my step-mother’s large family Christmases – where no fewer than twenty of them/us will congregate in four generations under a tree obscenely laden with trinkets and gifts and all will sing FalalalalalalalalalalalalalallalaaAGHHGGGG.

But I’m not going.

Not because I’m not invited. I am. I’m asked every year.

I’m not going because I still haven’t gotten over being a grumpy pumpkin and although everyone is always very nice to me, I’m not really quite part of that family. I’m still the child from the first marriage.

The starter child.

Like the first pancake you make that didn’t quite turn out right and the other, subsequent ones are so much nicer, and they don’t say awkward, rude things, or remind you of your bitter failures.

Who can blame the chef? (Apart from me, I mean. I obviously do.)

For many years I had suppressed and rationalised the disappointment. I got used to being second best. I tried not to look too hard or mind too much and kept a civil distance from them all. But when I had children of my own I somehow, foolishly perhaps, thought the slate would be wiped clean again and my beautiful, perfect offspring would be irresistible because there would be no history there to taint the relationship.

But only the other day Five asked me why her granddad had never come to see her for Christmas.

I could have told her what he told me, that he was committed to going to the UK with his wife and other children every year because her elderly mother was unable to travel (the unspoken message being that we are waiting for her to die) but as I feel that this is only the latest in a thirty year line of unsatisfactory excuses I did not repeat it.

I just said I didn’t know.

“Perhaps he doesn’t love us enough.” She said sadly.

A dagger through the heart.

She spoke my thoughts of the last three decades that I never had the courage to voice out loud.

“Oh, I don’t think it’s that” I said lightly, my heart turned quite black

“I think Grandad doesn’t understand that he is making a choice that will have some consequences for him.”

“What kind of consequences?” she wanted to know.

“That you will be sad, and maybe angry, and that I will be sad, too, and perhaps we will stop asking him one day. Then he will never have Christmas with his grandchildren. I don’t know whether he will be happy with that, but as you know, choices have consequences.”

Five thought about this for a bit.

“I don’t think that Grandad went to Kindergarten so he probably doesn’t get it.”

I had to suppress a wild giggle. My father, who spent his professional life advising world leaders has been summarily brought down to size and into sharp focus by my small daughter.

He’s clueless. He has no idea. He doesn’t get it.

How liberating! I felt immediately released from the usual angst and regret that accompanies the joy of seeing him.

And while it’s a little sad to think that we won’t have him here for Christmas, I don’t need to make that about me. It’s about him and his problems and his constraints and issues. My Dad can’t compensate for my lost childhood Christmases anyway– that’s all in the past.
But my Five and Two year old’s Dad – sweet Husband – will be here for their Christmas, and that’s the present.

My Christmas present.