Questions from the fatherless.
Navigating Life's Questions and Challenges Without a Father's Presence.
Original Publication Date: Dec 27, 2022
During my early years of primary school, my father paid me a visit to my aunt’s dental surgery. Having lived with my uncle from a very young age, it turns out I used to call my uncle dad. Because my cousins legitimately referred to their parents as Mom and Dad, I saw no crime in doing the same. I was young after all, and I had lived with my uncle and auntie for practically all of my childhood. That day, my auntie managed to track down my father and they wanted me to meet him.
I’m not sure if I was excited or not. The new development would lead me to the truth that I had my own ‘dad’, but he somehow lived with other kids somewhere else and not with me. What remains of that memory until today is that he bought me a toy horse. The horse was made from plastic and had a short thin tube connected to a round, medium-sized inflatable ball akin to those sponge balls they give you to squeeze when you are pumping blood from the veins in your arms. When I squeezed the ball the horse’s back feet would move in and out causing the horse to gallop. Such splendour for a seven-year-old, I was beyond ecstatic. To top off the gesture he left me a Bearer’s cheque note. A bearers’ cheque was Zimbabwe’s struggling currency during the early 2000s. My cousin and I bought creamed bread on our way home and some Freezits (popsicles). I tasted different heaven that afternoon and he wished my father had given me enough for a month. But that was the last of you know who.
No phone calls. No regular checkups. No more toys. No more horses or some dollar notes. He was never to be heard of again. A whole father swindler. Unbelievable! And everyone said I looked like him. ‘Even the big ears were his, no question’, they would laugh.
I remember how my grandfather was so disappointed when he heard the story. The one that had gone to buy milk had returned. ‘So that was it?’, he asked. ‘No money for groceries or clothes to wear?’. ‘How does he think you pay for school?’ ‘What a useless thing of a man.’ I was young and I cared not. Most of my indifference, even up until today, was maybe my growing up around many male figures like my grandfather and uncles. In African societies, In Zimbabwe maybe, or at least in my family, I grew up being told that my uncles are my fathers. And as such, they were viewed. And as such, they acted.
Although I always love to believe I turned out great as a young man without his father, I tend to feel that maybe the lack of his presence may have affected some of my needed self-actualization characteristics especially as a young man now traversing the adulting phase. I had many male role models and many father figures. They all had and still have families of their own. A part of me wishes to believe some of the questions I had would have been answered by having a front seat to my own father’s life.
Often, I would hear my grandmother say, ‘What you’re doing now are behaviours you get from your father’s side.’ Especially when I was getting all naughty. To be fair, she would also say I get my smartness from my father. Apparently, he was a man who loved himself and his appearance. African parents are notorious for attaching some traits kids exhibit to individuals, say, the father, mother, or grandfather. In some cases, they were right because if you looked closely, you would notice a similarity in the actions of the child and parent. The children would also confess to some parallels being true. Anyways, back to me and my father. I sometimes wonder if some of my actions are a direct inheritance from him.
For instance, how I navigate my relationships. I often have a passive approach to meeting girls. My game may be considered less masculine in traditional terms. Interpret that in however you define as traditional. The point is not to put my approach to scrutiny but however to observe that the non-existence of those primate traits could be traced back to his absence, presence, or existence in general.
Work ethic is another questionable trait. I have seen hard workers or smart workers say they are the way they are because they saw their father or mother work in a certain way to make ends meet. For some, the non-belief of their parents in their potential spurred them to greater heights. Some were born of successful fathers and never wanting to be under the shadow of their father’s success found their own successful paths. Then there’s me, a Zimbabwean in America struggling to wake up in the morning for work or school. I don’t want to appear as if I’m linking all my shortcomings or motivations to being fatherless. The questions of what is and how it is are never-ending in my mind. I believe we all need answers within ourselves from such life’s givings.
The proclivity to violence is also a question for me. I know that the lottery of birth is very random and sometimes parents give birth to extreme opposites of who they are. Sometimes the environment we grow up in, regardless of the family being upright, shapes us more. I had to learn to fight. Well, not physically yet. But I can swear that my confidence to stand up for myself in the face of threat or disrespect is at an all-time high. Will Smith’s memoir details how his once abusive father with a military style of parenting is one of the major factors that built his mindset and resilience thus propelling him to impeccable heights. I must build this type of excellence on my own in my mid-twenties. His presence at a young age could have negated some of the things I needed to be a man.
The opposite is also true in this trial of my father. His existence in my life doesn’t guarantee a glorious life and a well-natured young kid ready to take on the world and be his own man. It could, as a matter of fact, have been worse. But the prospect of a life with both parents having turned out great is still worth toying with, right? Even the unending desires to find true love and grow families at the expense of growing ourselves first may be rescheduled. Maybe I’m of the same nature myself. Growing up in a big family and moving from uncle to uncle because my father is not around, and my mother is abroad may pose a desire to at some point have what you did not have during the tender years. Family time with mom and dad. Mine is a lighter case relative to millions of sons and daughters who may be victims of a brutal justice system, migrant separation, war, and, worse -the unbearable terror of death.
A hard line would be to say, your dad left so what? Just live life and have fun in the struggle. True as that may be, putting it in black and white eases the never-ending chatter of the mind. I hope this finds you well. It left me well.
Members of the reading jury, I rest my case.