Quite some time back I wrote to you. On this website. Your search for your father touched something in me because my own life - differently but similarly - has followed a "search" for my own father who died aged 24 in a car accident - when I was just two, my little brother 10 months - my mother only nine days earlier having reached 21 - then the age of majority in Australia. Some of my (first) cousins and an uncle (now passed) away live in Arizona (Mesa/Tempe - and Prescott). And interestingly last year in October (2023) my wife and I visited with kinship connections in Fort Myers (south-west Florida) - the connection born on Union Island in the St Vincent & Grenadines archipelago - but following a terrible hurricane in 1955 - aged five - grew up as a refugee in Trinidad & Tobago - his wife from Trinidad - till in the late 1970s they moved to Washington DC then to NYC.
Some years after my father's death my mother re-married - and I never had an easy relationship with my step-father. Going away at age 16 to study at university was as much an escape from his bullying as it was an advancement into my own life - a deforming kind of experience. After his early death - he was only 67 - 40 years ago ... I got on with my life - and my search for who my father was, may have become - had he lived - and who I might have become had he lived - a player of music? A writer of poetry? A sketcher/artist? All of which he was - and a builder, too. None of which I was.
It was during a visit back to see my mother from Japan where I taught for most of the 1990s and 2000s that she told me that my father had loved me. That he had carried me around - refusing to give me up to the younger aunts who followed him around - he was an attractive young fellow - it seems they vied for his attention - that I was his - in contrast to his olive complexion and brown eyes - blond-haired and blue-eyed like my mother. It was the first time I felt a kind of charge - that my father became real - not just a figure in some photographs. I felt him holding me. It was a revelation and a feeling that has never left me - my father loved me. I am looking forward to reading your book when it is completed (no pressure) if I am still living - I am now into my 76th year... Sincere best wishes, Jim
Ya, I hear how it takes the time that it takes and that there is an emergent process unfolding for you. This my experience as well with creative endeavours that are soul-full. There’s always a lot of processing that arises and it takes the time that it takes. I’ll look forward to your story whenever it is ripe for the telling.
Quite some time back I wrote to you. On this website. Your search for your father touched something in me because my own life - differently but similarly - has followed a "search" for my own father who died aged 24 in a car accident - when I was just two, my little brother 10 months - my mother only nine days earlier having reached 21 - then the age of majority in Australia. Some of my (first) cousins and an uncle (now passed) away live in Arizona (Mesa/Tempe - and Prescott). And interestingly last year in October (2023) my wife and I visited with kinship connections in Fort Myers (south-west Florida) - the connection born on Union Island in the St Vincent & Grenadines archipelago - but following a terrible hurricane in 1955 - aged five - grew up as a refugee in Trinidad & Tobago - his wife from Trinidad - till in the late 1970s they moved to Washington DC then to NYC.
Some years after my father's death my mother re-married - and I never had an easy relationship with my step-father. Going away at age 16 to study at university was as much an escape from his bullying as it was an advancement into my own life - a deforming kind of experience. After his early death - he was only 67 - 40 years ago ... I got on with my life - and my search for who my father was, may have become - had he lived - and who I might have become had he lived - a player of music? A writer of poetry? A sketcher/artist? All of which he was - and a builder, too. None of which I was.
It was during a visit back to see my mother from Japan where I taught for most of the 1990s and 2000s that she told me that my father had loved me. That he had carried me around - refusing to give me up to the younger aunts who followed him around - he was an attractive young fellow - it seems they vied for his attention - that I was his - in contrast to his olive complexion and brown eyes - blond-haired and blue-eyed like my mother. It was the first time I felt a kind of charge - that my father became real - not just a figure in some photographs. I felt him holding me. It was a revelation and a feeling that has never left me - my father loved me. I am looking forward to reading your book when it is completed (no pressure) if I am still living - I am now into my 76th year... Sincere best wishes, Jim
Beautiful to witness you here in this substack space Jaden. 🪶
Ya, I hear how it takes the time that it takes and that there is an emergent process unfolding for you. This my experience as well with creative endeavours that are soul-full. There’s always a lot of processing that arises and it takes the time that it takes. I’ll look forward to your story whenever it is ripe for the telling.