Last week I wrote The 5 Types Of Kids At A Pre-School Disco which got me thinking about the typical types of drunk people you will come across at any event involving alcohol.
In recent years I haven’t been as much of a drinker, certainly not since the idea of a hangover with young children is about as appealing as a root canal! However I have been out clubbing the odd time and to be honest I felt:
#1. Too sober
#2. Overdressed (literally!)
#3. Old!
That is putting work do’s aside which always start off quietly and end with climbing fences to go on glow worm hunts in the Botanical Gardens or crashing someones 21st birthday … Not that that has happened recently of course! Ha!
So my 4 year old had his very first kindergarten disco on Friday night and the invitation of course extended to the whole family (somehow I don’t think they’re quite at the age for the drop off and run quite yet!).
This week I have been too preoccupied to read or do anything but search high and low for diaries I am no longer sure exist but have vague memories of reading which I first talked about in my post To The Father Who Doesn’t Know I Exist … (If you haven’t read it, perhaps do so first before continuing to read this update).
Has this ever happened to anyone else? You have some whisper of a memory at the edge of your subconscious and you begin to think you imagined it or dreamt it because you can’t seem to reach the whole memory to put it back together. In my instance I have a memory of reading a diary that contained the name Jimmy and details of my mums life in London after finding out she was pregnant, except I can’t pull that memory and make the pieces fit. I can’t picture the diary and nor can I find it despite searching high and low. This weekend I fear I may turn my house upside down in an effort to locate it. Because my house is so small, I’m worried I inadvertently threw it away or the memory is a complete fabrication in my mind. How does that happen? Perhaps the memory of what I read was a whisper in my ear while sleeping from a woman long since dead. I must admit the strangeness of this situation is starting to mess with my brain!
After I posted the post last Tuesday it was shared by over 300 people and viewed by more than 34,000.
Ironically it was shared by a blogger friend who I only met the week before. It was then viewed and shared by an old flatmate of hers from her London days. From there it ended up in a ex employees group of a tour company where it was seen by someone who knew him and passed that on to a family member who by Friday then contacted me. 3 days is all it took. Social media is amazing in this day and age! The world shrinks a little more with every passing year.
We are currently trying to piece things together. 34 years ago is a very long time, memories are scratched away with time and I have no corroboration to put together a timeline but we are trying to put the story together through photographs and dredging up long forgotten memories from the past.
Perhaps I will get answers or perhaps I never will but I already feel a surreal sort of peace that I know now that he exists, even if the reality is far more complicated than I anticipated. I still have had no direct contact with him and may not, however I do feel a sense of closure in how this has all panned out despite this.
Time will tell.
A HUGE thank you to all who embraced my search and shared for me! I could never have found him without you. THANK YOU.
I spent a great deal of Sunday morning uploading songs to my Spotify account, dictated from a book I discovered in the wooden chest I had explored with curiosity the previous weekend while searching for clues to the identity of my biological father.
The book was a little floral covered notebook where my mum had carefully and dutifully handwritten a list of her all time favourite songs. I remember as a child and teenager that on weekends mum would pop in her old cassette tapes (the kind that were recorded straight from the radio) and blast her favourite songs, a myriad collection from November Rain by Guns n Roses to Little Red Corvette, a classic Prince track and everything inbetween.
To be completely honest I never gave too much thought to the fact I didn’t know who my biological father was.
The thought would certainly fleet through now and again in the recess of my mind but most of the time it didn’t occupy much space and I could go years without even thinking about it at all.
The fact that you live overseas and you don’t know I exist has always made the challenge of trying to find you just too hard. My mum told me a name once. Literally. I asked and she cried and I never asked again because I was too scared to upset her. I’m not sure why she cried. If she was overwhelmed by the question or whether it was a painful memory. It was always shrouded in such secrecy that I never knew quite what to think.
I heard it was like some kind of magic super food and it’s certainly trendy right now, so I thought I’d give it a go. I bought it for the exclusive purpose of adding it to the smoothies which I’ve just started drinking again. In fact, I must confess that I had no idea what kale looked like until I bought some and now I am very confused that my kale looks absolutely nothing like the images I found for this post and I’m still left wondering what the vegetable actually looks like before the leaves are yanked off!
