12 th December 2006 - Still trying to please Mum

It occured to me today - I think for the first time - that I visit Dad as much as I do not for him, not even as a penance, not even to force myself to be a better person but in fact to please my Mum. My long dead Mum. My long dead Mum who once had the opportunity of saving me and didn't take it. Why have I always sought the approval of a woman who wouldn't protect her daughter?

When I needed her to believe me, to protect me, to mother me, she was more concerned with appearances, with not making a fuss, with not getting the outside involved in our lives, than she was of stopping her father hurting me. In the long run I found out that she'd been abused as a child, by someone outside her family, who hung himself when she told her Mum. Her Mum didn't tell her she was lying. Her Mum didn't tell her that her stories would mean her brother and sister would be put in care. Her Mum went to the police. And he hung himself. Maybe she'd been tormented by guilt for his death all her life and thought things better left, not upset, "don't rock the boat". Her Dad wasn't really her Dad - does that make it better?

Two weeks ago my Dad told me that he wasn't my Dad, that my Mum's Dad was. I don't know if he knew what he was saying, don't know if he knew who he was talking to. I'd suspected he wasn't my Dad for a couple of years but it hadn't occured to me that my 'Granda' was. He once said "yer Mum used to be my wee girl, but your my wee girl now". What this meant has changed in my mind over the years but it never occured to me that he was really my Dad.

Anyway, it doesn't matter who is my Dad. This Dad, this old man, needs someone and - ironically enough - it's me that's in a position to be there.