The day my Dad left
Where else better to start than the strongest memory of all that started this whole thing off?
If I remember correctly, it was sometime in 1996, September I think. I was six years old.
Im going to tell you a bit about how my family started off first, though I hardly have any memory of before that day. I was born in February 1990. My brother - Connor - was born four years after me. A typical family to me, mum, dad, son and daughter. We were very close, I know that for definate. We have so many photographs that have been collected over the years of us all, I could practically put a storyboard together of us all growing up and developing a life together. My mum used to be a carer until she had me, and gave her career up to be a mother. My dad, a sheet metal worker, and still is, was the one bringing money into the family to care for us all. Since I know that we were all happy, I’m guessing we did a good job of it. When Connor was born, and due to the fact we lived in a box of a house, we ended up looking for a bigger home, rented the house out and moved in with my mum’s parents for a few months. It might seem a bit extreme, four adults a kid and a newlyborn living under the same roof, but the house was fairly big. We seemed quite settled there, but after a while there developed tension between my dad and my nan. I remember that.
After that, we moved into our proper home. And that’s all I can tell you upto then.
I came home one day to find my dad loading his car all his stuff in bin bags. He seemed pretty pissed, so I asked him were he was going. He didnt relpy. I asked him again. After still no answer I asked if I could come with him. Me and my dad were pretty close back then. That’s what I’ve been told by him anyway. He told me that he was always the one who got up in the middle of the night when I wanted attention, and the one who took me out and spent time with me when he wasnt at work, and that my mum never bothered with me. But I saw it the other way around. Those memories that I do have, were of the ones where I would cry to my mum to get my own way or when my dad had been mean to me. The ones I have of my dad was where he would force food down my throat when I was being fussy at the dinner table or I would get a slap. I was scared of him, because he seemed powerful and he always got his own way, and the way I remember my mum keeping quiet seemed like she was in some sense afraid of him aswell. That’s about it for the relationship I had with my parents back then.
He didn’t let me come with him when he finished packing his things. Instead, he shouted at me to get inside and go to my mum. He got in the car and drove off, leaving me stood there confused about why he had ignored me like that. Had I done something wrong?
I went inside the house to find my mum. She was in her bedroom, and the bath was running for me an Connor. Sunday ‘bath’ night. I asked her what was wrong with dad and where he was going as she undressed me. ‘Promise me you wont get upset?’ she asked me. I knew what was coming. ‘Me and you dad have split up. He’s not coming back.’
I tried to keep her promise by smiling but almost immediately burst into tears. I remember sitting in the bath with Connor, who was two at the time, looking up at me all innocent wondering why I was so upset.
That was the last time I saw my dad for months