This article is from the source 'guardian' and was first published or seen on . It last changed over 40 days ago and won't be checked again for changes.
You can find the current article at its original source at https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/aug/25/moment-changed-me-meeting-my-father
The article has changed 4 times. There is an RSS feed of changes available.
| Version 2 | Version 3 |
|---|---|
| A moment that changed me: meeting my father for the first time | A moment that changed me: meeting my father for the first time |
| (about 2 months later) | |
| I glanced across the cafe table at the man sitting opposite. We had the same prominent cheekbones, long chin and fine hair that wouldn’t do what it was meant to. We smoked the same brand of strong Dutch rolling tobacco and his purplish skin tone, like mine, revealed poor circulation. Although short, our conversation had already uncovered shared tastes in films, books and music. We crossed our legs in unison, tapped the ash from our cigarettes with the same studied mannerism, and jiggled our feet to a silent rhythm. | I glanced across the cafe table at the man sitting opposite. We had the same prominent cheekbones, long chin and fine hair that wouldn’t do what it was meant to. We smoked the same brand of strong Dutch rolling tobacco and his purplish skin tone, like mine, revealed poor circulation. Although short, our conversation had already uncovered shared tastes in films, books and music. We crossed our legs in unison, tapped the ash from our cigarettes with the same studied mannerism, and jiggled our feet to a silent rhythm. |
| The man opposite was my father. I’d met him for the first time half an hour before. | The man opposite was my father. I’d met him for the first time half an hour before. |
| Making sense of my identity | Making sense of my identity |
| That first weekend in Paris meant different things to both of us. I was a confused 19-year-old student in desperate search of a sense of identity from a father I’d never met. He was a surrealist painter reunited with a son he hadn’t seen in 18 years. As we hugged somewhat awkwardly in the reception area of a hotel, I could see him welling up. I felt guilty for not experiencing a similar surge of emotion but to me he was a stranger. | That first weekend in Paris meant different things to both of us. I was a confused 19-year-old student in desperate search of a sense of identity from a father I’d never met. He was a surrealist painter reunited with a son he hadn’t seen in 18 years. As we hugged somewhat awkwardly in the reception area of a hotel, I could see him welling up. I felt guilty for not experiencing a similar surge of emotion but to me he was a stranger. |
| I heard about Phil when I was 13 – a few years after Robert, the man I’d thought was my biological father, had died (in an industrial accident, I was told at the time, although I later found out he killed himself during a work trip to Australia). One day when I was off school sick, my mum started a conversation in the kitchen of our anonymous, pebble-dashed semi in Suffolk, explaining that Robert had adopted me. She and Phil had been art students in Brighton at the end of the 60s. They got married after she fell pregnant, but separated before I was born. The last she’d heard, this working-class Yorkshire lad was living in Venezuela. I pictured him paddling down the Orinoco in a dugout canoe – an image I still somehow connect with him. | |
| Robert had treated me as his own son and – after his death and before she remarried – my mum performed the role of both parents as best she could while we struggled to get by on benefits and free school meals. I told her I wasn’t interested in meeting Phil and instead started to go quietly off the rails – smashing windows, breaking into cars and frequent drinking to the point of memory loss. I rarely got caught and, as I continued to do well at school, no one really noticed. | |
| It was when I left small-town Suffolk for university at 18 that I realised I didn’t have a clue who I was. I hadn’t been conscious of leading a sheltered life, but suddenly I met people who had travelled the world and knew what they wanted to be. Much of that period is a stoned blur. | It was when I left small-town Suffolk for university at 18 that I realised I didn’t have a clue who I was. I hadn’t been conscious of leading a sheltered life, but suddenly I met people who had travelled the world and knew what they wanted to be. Much of that period is a stoned blur. |
| After some pretty self-destructive episodes, mum offered to get in touch with Phil and this time I agreed. She wrote a letter explaining I’d like to make contact. A week later (this was pre-internet) we had a reply. He was no longer living in Caracas, he wrote, and had moved with his Spanish wife and teenage daughter to Zaragoza, a city in the north of Spain. He’d recently finished exhibiting at the Venice Biennale and had another show coming up in Paris next weekend. Would I come and meet him? | After some pretty self-destructive episodes, mum offered to get in touch with Phil and this time I agreed. She wrote a letter explaining I’d like to make contact. A week later (this was pre-internet) we had a reply. He was no longer living in Caracas, he wrote, and had moved with his Spanish wife and teenage daughter to Zaragoza, a city in the north of Spain. He’d recently finished exhibiting at the Venice Biennale and had another show coming up in Paris next weekend. Would I come and meet him? |
| A few days later I found myself sitting opposite my father in a cafe in Montmartre. We spent a couple of nights in Paris with a group of painters and poets from the exhibition and then took a train south to Zaragoza to meet his wife Marisa and Sandra, my new sister. She had known nothing about my existence until I made contact the week before but we soon had a strong bond. Phil and his family welcomed me into their lives. | A few days later I found myself sitting opposite my father in a cafe in Montmartre. We spent a couple of nights in Paris with a group of painters and poets from the exhibition and then took a train south to Zaragoza to meet his wife Marisa and Sandra, my new sister. She had known nothing about my existence until I made contact the week before but we soon had a strong bond. Phil and his family welcomed me into their lives. |
| In those early days, Phil and I would trawl bars and talk until dawn. I badgered him with questions about the purpose of life and he pointed me in the direction of William Blake and the Marquis de Sade. | In those early days, Phil and I would trawl bars and talk until dawn. I badgered him with questions about the purpose of life and he pointed me in the direction of William Blake and the Marquis de Sade. |
| Back at university I finally felt I had an identity: I was the lanky one who dressed in black, took too many drugs and had a cool, bohemian father. It soon became clear, though, that too much time had passed and too much had happened for it all to be quite so easy. Phil’s determination to live the artist’s lifestyle meant putting creation – and an unquenchable thirst for brandy – above all else, including people’s feelings. When he divorced Marisa a couple of years later, I couldn’t cope with feeling torn between my new father and new sister. So I stopped visiting. | Back at university I finally felt I had an identity: I was the lanky one who dressed in black, took too many drugs and had a cool, bohemian father. It soon became clear, though, that too much time had passed and too much had happened for it all to be quite so easy. Phil’s determination to live the artist’s lifestyle meant putting creation – and an unquenchable thirst for brandy – above all else, including people’s feelings. When he divorced Marisa a couple of years later, I couldn’t cope with feeling torn between my new father and new sister. So I stopped visiting. |
| It was difficult with my English family too. Since meeting Phil, all sorts of skeletons had been aired. I found out how my grandmother had recommended my mum get an abortion; how my favourite aunt had disapproved of the squat Phil had proposed as our new home and convinced my mum to return to her parents. I heard how Phil would turn up for access visits still out of it on LSD from the day before. I even discovered I had originally been registered with a different name – Salvador West (my mum changed it before the six-week limit was up). What bothered me most was that my closest older relatives had known about all this and kept quiet. They had good intentions but I felt everything I trusted and believed in was crashing down. | |
| It wasn’t until I became a father myself that I gained any real understanding of how Phil must have felt | It wasn’t until I became a father myself that I gained any real understanding of how Phil must have felt |
| After scraping through university, I borrowed a few hundred pounds for a plane ticket and set off round the world, generally favouring the dodgiest areas I could find. It was four years before I properly settled back in England and in those pre-mobile, pre-internet days it was easy to go weeks, often months, without contact. | After scraping through university, I borrowed a few hundred pounds for a plane ticket and set off round the world, generally favouring the dodgiest areas I could find. It was four years before I properly settled back in England and in those pre-mobile, pre-internet days it was easy to go weeks, often months, without contact. |
| I hadn’t been to Zaragoza for a couple of years when I got a call from Mum to say Phil was in hospital. I was 26 and, finally bored with my rootless lifestyle, was sleeping on a friend’s floor in south London as I waited to hear about a place on a post-grad journalism course. Mum paid for a flight and the next day I joined the rest of Phil’s family at his bedside. No one seemed to know what was happening at first but it eventually became clear that he’d had a toe amputated because of skin cancer the year before and now had a brain tumour the size of a small orange. With the cancer spread around his body he had taken the decision to refuse all but palliative care. | I hadn’t been to Zaragoza for a couple of years when I got a call from Mum to say Phil was in hospital. I was 26 and, finally bored with my rootless lifestyle, was sleeping on a friend’s floor in south London as I waited to hear about a place on a post-grad journalism course. Mum paid for a flight and the next day I joined the rest of Phil’s family at his bedside. No one seemed to know what was happening at first but it eventually became clear that he’d had a toe amputated because of skin cancer the year before and now had a brain tumour the size of a small orange. With the cancer spread around his body he had taken the decision to refuse all but palliative care. |
| A few days later I flew back to London to start my course. A week after that I heard he had died. I didn’t have the money to fly over for his funeral. | A few days later I flew back to London to start my course. A week after that I heard he had died. I didn’t have the money to fly over for his funeral. |
| The son becomes a father | The son becomes a father |
| I was consumed with regret. I’d known him for seven years but had wasted half that time not talking to him. His death before his 48th birthday had robbed me of any chance of reconciliation, of working it through together. | I was consumed with regret. I’d known him for seven years but had wasted half that time not talking to him. His death before his 48th birthday had robbed me of any chance of reconciliation, of working it through together. |
| It wasn’t until I became a father myself a decade or so later that I gained any real understanding of how Phil must have felt. He was only 21 when I was born. Now that I’m the age he was when we met in Paris that first time, I can appreciate what it might have been like to be confronted by a confused 19-year-old desperate for answers. Would I have done any better? I can see now how hard I was on him. | It wasn’t until I became a father myself a decade or so later that I gained any real understanding of how Phil must have felt. He was only 21 when I was born. Now that I’m the age he was when we met in Paris that first time, I can appreciate what it might have been like to be confronted by a confused 19-year-old desperate for answers. Would I have done any better? I can see now how hard I was on him. |
| It was only after Phil’s death that I really began to work out who I was. I had felt stifled by an intense need to live up to his expectations, to be creative, but at once I was liberated. I threw myself into life as a news reporter, moved into a flat, had relationships and eventually got married and had a child. | It was only after Phil’s death that I really began to work out who I was. I had felt stifled by an intense need to live up to his expectations, to be creative, but at once I was liberated. I threw myself into life as a news reporter, moved into a flat, had relationships and eventually got married and had a child. |
| It took five years of psychoanalysis to work through the anger and loss but I’m more at peace with him now. I’ve travelled a few times to the hills in the Pyrenees where his ashes are scattered, and visited the Eugenio Granell museum in Santiago de Compostela where most of his paintings are. While I still sometimes get the unsettling feeling that life isn’t real, I now prefer ultrarunning to drugs and, for the most part, I’m content with a quiet life. | It took five years of psychoanalysis to work through the anger and loss but I’m more at peace with him now. I’ve travelled a few times to the hills in the Pyrenees where his ashes are scattered, and visited the Eugenio Granell museum in Santiago de Compostela where most of his paintings are. While I still sometimes get the unsettling feeling that life isn’t real, I now prefer ultrarunning to drugs and, for the most part, I’m content with a quiet life. |
| In the end I believe meeting Phil had an overall positive effect on my life. The experience certainly left me with a determination to make my own son’s early life as straightforward and stable as possible, while the incessant shocks – and all that death at an early age – taught me that life is short … and anything is possible. |