Letters 2015
Letter 39
6th December 2015 (Melbourne, Australia)
Dear D,
I am sitting in a study a house in a suburb of Australia writing this on my laptop, wondering how you are and what you are doing. That is as much as I can manage with all avenues to you closed to me, as if there is a conspiracy to ensure no information about you reaches me. I sometimes wonder why people would be so convinced that complete separation of a daughter and father makes any sense. Especially when we had such a close and loving relationship for the first eight or nine years of your life, until a mysterious poison was drip fed to bring about a change in your thoughts and feelings for me. It took me a long time, even years after our separation when you were nearly twelve years old, that, at that time and probably even now, you have a hatred for me. How can such a thing happen, when I never caused you any harm or changed my feelings of love for you. It has happened though and I will never fully understand it, despite reading extensively about this phenomenon or syndrome as it is called. I will always imagine that the hatred is on the surface, but totally dominating the natural feelings of love you would have had for me. So I pray every day that somehow these latent feelings will surface. I try and remain hopeful that you will change your mind and sometimes I feel really hopeless about a future for us, but I do believe that God will find a way to re-unite us in a way that does not cause you hurt or pain and that I can carry on showing my love for you as before. Whatever happens, I will not upset the balance of your life, however it has evolved. As always I will accept you exactly as I find you. I notice you changed your profile photograph on Facebook recently. This is my sole connection to your life, at least giving me a view of how you looks as you mature and I really thank you for the privilege of this glimpse.
I never wanted to travel as far as Australia or even USA, but your half-brother, has been here for 10 years now and I have never managed to get to visit him, being difficult to fit in while I was working full time. I always promised I would come when I retired and having finally done so four months ago, I booked flights and have now been here over three weeks. It is actually just starting summer here with a temperature of 32° today. There is so much to see in Australia, such a large country that it would take months or even years to begin to fully appreciate it. In the short time here I have seen kangaroos, wallabies, emus, wombats, koalas, Tasmanian devils, cockatoos, parrots, rosellas and lots of other weird & wonderful animals & birds I would never see at home. The scale of the country is something else as well – it takes 10 hours to drive the from Sydney to Melbourne, which I always thought were quite close together. This Friday I am flying to Nandy in Fiji with the rest of his family to join him, there already organising a youth group of twenty-four on a venture to do charitable works in a village there. I will then fly home to Heathrow via Hong Kong ready for Christmas. It is by far the longest I have been away from my home but two friends and a neighbour are keeping an eye on the flat and car.
If you are at university, I would love to know how you are getting on in your first term – I hope and pray that you have chosen wisely & enjoy the experience of university life and that you are successful in absorbing everything to do with your course. Of course, I hope you make good lifetime friends while there, as I did all those years ago.
With all my love for now,
dad xxx