I am here to inform you that your daughters, not just your sons, need you to be actively present in their lives. A girl needs her father too. The most indelible memories of my father are all before I was ten years old and then there is a blank. Not one scrap of an image after that period as my father migrated to the United States of America and  was absent from my life for the next nine years.  His leaving and not communicating with us left a vacuum that took three years of therapy to come to terms with my issue of abandonment  and to make space for me to have a meaningful relationship with a man and prepare to be a mother to my children.  Daniel Flint, a paediatric psychologist, says girls who have healthy relationships with their fathers are less likely to develop depression. While I was never diagnosed with depression, I do believe that my tendency during that time-frame to go off by myself and live primarily inside my head might have been related to my father’s absence.

Luckily, positive males figures were filled by my two maternal uncles,  Lloyd, a painter, and Cecil, a soldier, both of whom visited regularly and took my sister and I  on outings, the latter always protective, warning his friends when he took us around them, that we were his nieces and that they had to respect and protect us. Once, Cecil spoke angrily at one of his friends who cursed in our presence, warning him, “Nuh cuss nu bad words in front of dem.” Lloyd was more cultural and spoke to me kindly but passionately about Africa,  Egypt civilization in particular. It was the love and grounding of both of these uncles that cushioned the privation of my father. As I moved beyond the confines of my home and began dating, it was their guidance and warning that guided my decisions. Studies have confirmed that a girl’s relationship with her father often influences  her romantic choices, but more importantly, a father’s support, praise and active love boost a girl’s  self-esteem and confidence, allowing her to postpone or delay early sexual engagement. I wish I had had my Daddy during that period , but I am thankful for my uncles.

I was fortunate to have a loving, motivated, formidable mother who never seemed to be afraid of anyone or anything; she was amazing. However, I remember an incident of a man threatening  my mother and us, and her evoking my absent father’s presence, “Although, you don’t see a man in this house, just know my children have a father, and if you hurt them you will have to contend with him.”  My parents were then divorced and I know my mother had not heard from my father as I had deliberately eavesdropped on her speaking with her sister and lamenting, “Not a word from Dadda (everyone called my father  Dadda), not a word. Him just gone so.”  I remember crawling into my favourite corner after the threatening man left our gate, wondering what would happen if he were to return to fulfill his threats and neither my mother nor I could produce my father.  I remember being very angry with my father, feeling anxious and abandoned. I silently cursed my father, and I felt deeply ashamed. 

This feeling lingered with me, and while my mother always threw me lavish birthday parties and I had been all along looking forward to my sweet sixteen, I refused her offer of a party and did not celebrate this significant birthday because I did not know where my father was and he did not even send me a birthday card. While data suggest that girls with fathers tend to perform better academically, despite my father’s absence from my life for almost all of my undergraduate education, I was determined to perform to outshine him, the trained chemist and city planner. Despite the presence of my uncles, because there was never a man in the house, I did not witness a relationship between a man and a women close up, and did not know or felt capable to navigate the give and take that is required to grow and nurture a mature, wholesome relationship.

 This is a common topic discussed among many single women with “daddy issues,” especially if they have a strong mother as I did and no father or male role model at home. My father denied me this perspective, when  for whatever reason, he decided to walk away from me, from his children.

My father was a functioning alcoholic until the doctor warned him that his liver was at risk, after he migrated to the USA. This I learned, when I was an adult, was one of the foremost reasons why my mother left him and sought a divorce. Allegedly, he would come home drunk, belligerent and he was also a womanizer. I know this knowledge of his earlier behavior impacted my choice of the man I married, a non-Jamaican, non-drinker, whose parents were married for over forty years until his mother died. He was a man whom I felt would not abandon his children, no matter the circumstances, and he did not/ has not even after our divorce. Also, my forty and thirty-plus years friendship with Jamaican men, Neville, Don, Errol, Peter and Karl, Bilal, whom my children call uncles, was based on their exemplary roles as fathers and devoted husbands, and I thank and applaud them for their friendship and helping to serve as positive male models for my two daughters and a son.

I don’t remember my mother ever once speaking negatively about my father or trying to keep us from him. After they divorced when I was almost five years old, and while he was in Jamaica, he would always come to get us and I remember us spending a few weeks during the summer at his house.  I remember Sunday drives  in his grey Morris Oxford car.  When we moved to New York to attend college, in my fourth year, Daddy sent us a letter, having secured our address from his mother, saying he would like to see us.  I refused, still angry and feeling neglected and promptly said I was not going even though my older sister was eager. My mother did not insist, but she pulled me aside and urged me, “Give him a chance. Go see him and hear what he has to say. ” I relented and my mother drove my sister and I to the station to take the train to see Daddy in White Plains. That awkward reunion was surreal as Daddy acted like nine years had not elapsed.  That first visit made me even angrier.  I wanted an apology; I wanted him to go on his knees and beg our forgiveness.  I wanted from him what I could never have, those lost years returned.

I’m writing a book about my father that I began a year after his death, 2012,  entitled, The Scent of My Father, that I hope to complete this year.  Part of my challenge is trying to fill in the gaps and piece information from older cousins who knew him. There is so much I don’t know about my father even though we reconciled and I took my children to see him whenever I could.   We never lived in the same place again before his death, and he wasn’t big on talking via the telephone, preferring to write. I would ask him some questions about his life and he would write me letters which I still have. I truly miss those almost ten years of his absence…The sense of loss is still a big pit that I will carry to my grave. I don’t remember ever dancing with my father as a teenager or adult; he could not and did not attend my wedding.  He did not attend my children’s naming ceremony. There are so many events he did not attend, so many crucial moments in my life for which he was absent. The smell of my father is absent.  What does that smell like; like having a bad cold and losing your taste buds.

Once, when visiting my father at his home in White Plains, New York, he took me upstairs to his office and I was shocked to see photos of my sister and me on the walls. He also had copies of a few of my books. We went back downstairs, and were sitting in the kitchen by the window when I braved the question, “Why  didn’t you send me birthday cards for nine years?”  He looked away then stood up and removed the plates from the meal he had prepared for me that we had eaten. Then he sat back down and said, “I always remembered your birthday, but I just didn’t. I have always loved you…” Tears came to my eyes then, as they do now as I am allowing these moments to wash over me. Then he said nothing else even though I prodded, saying his life was complicated then…his first several years in the USA.

I suspected he might not have been legal even though when I visited him he was working as a chemist at one of the leading candy factories in the area, from sugar making to candy…a natural evolution. I had to tell myself what was lost was lost and could not be retrieved. I missed out and so did my father.

I want to think we both have holes that will never be filled. I love my father and two of my fondest memories of him are him swimming me out to sea on his back many Sunday mornings at the now defunct Gun Boat beach off the Palisadoes Road, and how safe and connected to be on Daddy’s back and the water enfolding us…Perhaps that is why the sea still soothes me. The other memory is of Daddy showing me how to clean Pretty Parrot’s cage and not being afraid to hold out my arm and have the parrot stand on it while feeding him peppers. I close my eyes now and try to imagine my Daddy’s arms embracing me, try to see if I can excavate  a memory of him dancing me on his feet, him telling me about what to look for in a good man and how to live a meaningful life.  The slate is clean. I have to nurture what I have and continue to love him despite the fact that he did not give me many things that I needed.

As I reflect on Father’s Day, I thank Vinnie, my father-in-law, who is/was a wonderful father figure to me, and never stopped calling me his daughter nor broke off communicating after his son and I divorced and I moved away.  Thanks Vinnie for your enduring love. So I appeal to all men who are fathers to not walk away from your sons or daughters.  We need you too and your absence leaves a chasm that no one can fill and no time or therapy can heal.  Your presence must be a constant  garden from which sun-flowers grow. Be an engaged, loving father to your daughters.  Help us to grown whole and strong. Happy Father’s Day, Daddy; A Blessed Father’s Day to all fathers.

                        Daddy I need you

                        the left side that grounds me

                        in masculine strength and assurance

                        with your love my feet are planted

                        not a path I cannot navigate…