THE MYSTERIOUS GUY (part 2)

Well, it was until my mum got born again and we joined a certain local church. Suddenly the scales on my eyes started falling off. I started noticing other families, functional families with both parents present. Once a friend asked me, “Why doesn’t your dad come to church with you?”. I was a child, in primary school but I suddenly felt ashamed. I had never had to confront my reality before. I had actually never thought of him as a necessity in my life. It had never bothered me that I ‘had no father’. Without a second thought I responded, “he died in a plane crash…” then went on and on about how small I was to actually feel the pain of losing him when my friend ashamedly muttered a “‘sorry, I didn’t know.” I was a child but I had finally found an escape in death. Escape from the shame of being from a single-family. I was too young and too naïve to think that one can easily escape their reality.

Growing older would make me realise how deceived I was! I dreaded particularly moments when we had altar calls in church and families would be called according to the parents’ marital status to go for prayers. This was where I first learnt the tag; ‘children born out of wedlock’. I remember once there was an announcement, “very soon we will be praying for children born out of wedlock.” This would be a tag that I would carry for the most part of my teenagehood. It was an embarrassing tag. A diplomatic way of being called a bastard. As a teenager, being self-conscious of my identity, I loathed this title but a teenager also is good at putting up a face. It doesn’t get to me. I am okay and at peace with my reality. Or was I?

I remember I once wrote a letter to God when I was in high school asking Him to take up His responsibility as a father. I had school fees arrears and needed it cleared. So I reminded Him of His promise to be a Father to the Fatherless. I smile now because younger me had a point. You know He doesn’t specify whether He will be a father to those rendered fatherless by the death of their father or those like me, whose fathers are missing in action for other reasons. I still have the letter till date. It was written in red ink perhaps because my heart was bleeding. (Let me just put it here that God is no respecter of persons and that what He says He does. He actually saw to it that my arrears were cleared but my education is a story for another day.) 

I remember that was the first time I seriously thought about how different my life would be if he was present in my life. This thought would recur in most of my teenage hood especially when we would have arguments with my mother. I wondered, “would he have taken her side or mine? Perhaps he would understand me better.” My mum is amazing, very supportive but teenage girls and their mums have a rivalry that is best understood by women. I had now started understanding that this may be my reality but my reality is not necessarily normal.

I remember a time in high school when my class teacher came to count the number of orphans in class. They had been asked to give a record I assume. She instructed that every orphaned student should raise their hand. I still remember the shock on her face when she did not see my hand raised. She questioned my decision and even instructed me to raise my hand. I refused at first but after a back and forth, I finally gave in. I raised my hand, she added my name to the tally and left. The class was left in stitches but now in hindsight, I shouldn’t have given in. What she did was wrong actually. I let that slide but the escape that I had once gotten in death was becoming an easier option, clearly. 

So later on when in campus a friend would ask, “how come you never talk of your dad BTW?”. We were discussing how separation affects children. I was grown. I knew quite well that life happens and decisions have to be made and that just because you were born out of wedlock, it doesn’t mean that you were an accident or unplanned for before God but shame and…pride would not let me admit that this man, father, was unknown to me. “My dad died when I was very young.” “Oh, sorry, I didn’t know that.” You know the usual response and I went on and on about how there was nothing to apologise about and that I had actually gotten used to it because I was too young when it happened. Liar! Liar! Pants on fire! But maybe it wasn’t a lie. He may be alive. This is a possibility I will never ignore. (I secretly wish that one day I will bump into him in town and immediately he will recognise my mother’s face that’s written all over me and we will hug and catch up and make up for the lost time. But let’s face it, this is not Disney! Sigh!).