Lament for fatherhood lost

Reconciled with daughter Ros after abandoning her as a toddler, Tony Thomas shares her column to mark Father’s Day. They hope their stories will resonate with other fractured families.

Lament for fatherhood lost
Ros Thomas
The West Australian
Published: Saturday September 1, 2012
Section: Opinion

A great gulf of loneliness stands between me and my father. And it comes from not knowing. Not knowing who he is, or which parts of me are him. Of not knowing his face and voice by heart. I often catch myself watching my children and their besotted father at their funny games, reliving my childhood vicariously through them. Wistful thinking. I never had a dad. He is a mythical creature in my life.

There is not a single photo of the two of us together. No teary pride with newborn bundle in the delivery suite. No small girl shoulder rides. Nowhere high from where to view the world.

Actually, there was one dog-eared snap of us, lost now, but it was only of his hand steadying mine as a laughing toddler in the bath. (I held that photo so many times as a kid, I thought if I looked hard enough, I would see love in that hand.)

It never really mattered to me as a child. My mum was my whole world. But there were always the awkward moments at other people’s houses when someone would ask “Where’s your dad?” and I would have to answer stupidly “I don’t know” and by the look on my face, they wouldn’t push further.
There were the odd fleeting visits from him, a strange man at the door, whisking me away to an unfamiliar house with new smells and foreign voices. Of another family that was mine, but with no history, for either of us. Studying his face for reflections of my own and finding none. A terrible sense of disconnectedness. The loaded silence on the drive home. An awkward kiss on the cheek on the way out the car door. Floods of tears once safely inside.
Funnily enough, I never pined for him on birthdays or at Christmas, there was always too much other excitement. I don’t think I ever looked at friends’ fathers with awe or envy either. I just wanted one of my own. A keepsake.

It was the quiet times, playing alone, when I reflected begrudgingly on how different I thought I was, and why it had to be me who had a half missing.
By high school it was my great shame. A reason to feel somehow inferior in the crowd. When the stigma of divorce was an impediment to fitting in. I hated him for it.

By the time I was interested in boys, I already had a thing for men. I was a walking stereotype. There were lovely boyfriends with fatherly kindnesses and affections, but they were somehow too simple. I needed the angst-filled, heaving burden of unrequited love. I found it at university in the great novels I studied and buried myself deep in Oedipus and Electra and became as father-fixated as ever.

How many other fatherless children are out there? How do we reconcile the disappointment of growing up feeling tainted by absent dads, or present ones who can’t live up to their responsibilities? Or expectations? Maybe they thought we’d be better off? Maybe we were. And how do we make a happy life for ourselves despite rough starts? Blame won’t help. Nor will anger. Or casting yourself as victim. I decided to take the part of heroine instead and strained to live up to it.

Now in my 40s and a mother, my great hurdle is how to break the cycle of abandonment that is now two generations in the making, and was very nearly a third. I feel intense, sometimes overwhelming pressure to ensure my second marriage is a happy union of parenthood and compatability. Because I cannot fail at delivering my children the unconditional presence of a father.

As a late bloomer, one who didn’t really hit her stride until her mid-20s, I have reconciled myself as the abandoned child made good, saved by the love of a mother and later, husband, friends and children. And I now recognise, and more importantly embrace in myself, the fears and self-doubts of a fatherless daughter. For few of us are gifted the perfect childhood.

Mea culpa for the sins of the dad who wasn’t there
Tony Thomas

My father returned from the war to find himself supplanted. He flew to Brisbane, for good. The drone of any plane had me rushing out to wave him a six-year-old’s welcome home. Who would think, after that, that I too would fail as a father? I reported for The West Australian for 12 years. Ros, you were three when I left my marriage and job in 1970 for Melbourne and then the Canberra press gallery. This was for my own good, not yours. On my last night at home, I sat and watched you for hours, asleep in your cot. I marvelled that I could be so selfish.

The following year was the turmoil of marriage separation and break-up and a new wife and plenty of career stress. About a third of my then-modest pay went on maintenance payments to Perth. I could just afford to build a house in Canberra. It was Struggle Street for both estranged families.

I seldom flew back to Perth for access. What is a father meant to do on an afternoon with a daughter who is now a stranger? There is only “activity”. One time we ran around happily, both of us at eight-year-old level. But as you got older, visits became clumsy affairs. After one visit, I howled with grief.
Each gap seemed to lead to a longer gap. When you were about 14, you wrote me a newsy letter about your life and your dog. It was a chance to start building bridges but nothing came of it.

My second marriage had also failed and this time, now in Melbourne, I was determined that I wouldn’t lose my son and daughter in Canberra. This issue involved counsellors, barristers and a court. I kept up fatherhood, at least with my toddler son.

But I didn’t have emotional energy left for an uphill campaign to generate a fatherly relationship with an adolescent daughter in Perth, who I assumed was busy sorting out local issues.

Maintenance to Perth became less onerous through wage inflation. It is sad that this outflow was the only nexus between our two families, accompanied by its mutual vexations. Divorces are an expensive pastime.

I know this is ridiculous, but next I felt that if I suddenly renewed contact you would interpret it as my wanting to share in your success in radio and television, to which I had contributed zilch.

I eventually became a bit more mature. I had married again and we raised two daughters, happily. I decided to do my damnedest to become some sort of belated father to you, the toddler I left when I was 29. You were suspicious and angry about my decades of absence. I did my best to talk honestly and diplomatically, and not to get discouraged by setbacks. Grandchildren gave me the chance to play a fun role as grandpa, minus baggage. Over the past decade we’ve finally got to know a bit about each other. I find it hard to express my emotions but I love our odd new relationship.

To other absentee fathers: “Stay in touch, come what may. Keep showing your face. If you’re in another city, it’s harder to keep up the contact. Man up and do your best anyway. Don’t be a quitter, like I was.”