Father Letter #1/June 13th, Anniversary of Sorts

Today, Wednesday - just two more days in this office. Shay is here helping me shlep things around - I don't know what I'd do without him!  The cruise on Lake Michigan was a lot of fun last night - Joan and Bill good company and their daughter Debbie, lovely. Sunday is Father's Day in case you forgot! We could talk about fathers today. For me, it's a very loaded topic! There were three of them - fathers that is. There were also none of them - they were all MIA. So, Father's Day is, for me, a difficult hateful holiday - a sad and jealous time. If you have a father you love or loved, I am very envious of you.

My father story is long and convoluted.  I was born Sarah Linn Frisbie to Joseph Calvin Frisbie, the third boy in an Irish/English family in Connecticut. He died when I was sixteen months old and my mother remarried when I was three. About five years ago, my sister and I started connecting some dots - things she remembered about our childhood, which led us to do a sibling DNA test. Turns out I'm the child of my mother's lover, Aldei Gregoire. I never knew him and to my knowledge he didn't know he was my father. And if he did, according to my mother, he would not have wanted a relationship with me - "he hated children" according to her.  He died "childless" in Western Massachusetts when I was a young woman (32) with no one to even write him an obituary. I'm thinking he and I would have had a relationship of some kind. Even if he hated children, I'm guessing he would have loved his own, especially in his old age.

So, one dead father, one biological father who was never told, and then a complex cruel stepfather. They all failed me in one way or another - fucking fathers. A few years ago, right after the DNA test, I sought catharsis by incorporating the three fathers into a book I was writing.  In the book, the heroine herself writes a book. She writes a chapter where her therapist (Kaveh of course) summons her three dead fathers to his office to discuss his struggling patient - she needs their help. They're confused to be there, not sure where they are, having been summoned from heaven and hell, and they're also angry to be in a room with each other. They are each given a letter written by their daughter that they read with varying reactions. The heroine of my book who in turn wrote her own book that included this surreal scene with her dead fathers also seeks catharsis. Following is the first of the three father letters - this one is to the father that died.

June 21, 2009 

Dear Father, This year a note to tell you I’ve been struggling with thoughts of you. I spent my entire life wanting you, wondering what you were like, and wondering if you would have loved me and protected me and understood me. 

When I was a little girl it was taboo to speak your name.  We were ashamed to want information about you, and we didn’t speak about you even among ourselves.  Now and then, our mother would say the same thing about you, “If Joe Frisbie (see she didn’t say ‘your father’) could see us now, the buttons on his shirt would burst with pride.”  And sometimes she would tell us that your dying wish to her was that we not get “slummy”.
 
So she married a man she thought would take care of us.  Instead he competed with us for her attention, belittled us, hurt us and ignored us. And if you did have a way to look down on us, your buttons would not have been popping.  Your eyes would have filled with tears and your fists would have been clenched, wanting to even the score. I am sorry my mother was not true to you.  I am sorry you didn’t get a chance to see us grow.   I know from all who knew you that you were the most loving of men and that you adored all children and your own especially.  

And I’m sorry I didn’t belong to you – that I wasn’t yours.  I should have been yours. But I also know that even if you knew, or came to know I was Aldei’s, you would still have loved me and raised me as your own and I would have loved you for it.  I wish you had lived. Why didn’t you live?  I still want you.  

Charlotte

Today, cutting the blog short because I have so much to do to get out of here. Tomorrow, I'll publish the second letter.  No challenge today except not forgetting about Father's Day if you still have an active father in your life.

Peace,
Sarah

Picture is how I feel today - an empty void in my life even a full year later.  Today is the anniversary of the day we broke up.