P A D R E

P A D R E

I grew up on my dad’s side of the family.

We moved in with his parents, my grandparents after he made the enormous decision to.. move us there.

He did that by telling my mother we needed to learn the language and culture back home, and that we would only be gone for 6 months to a year.

He didn’t tell her that he meant to permanently move us to Dakar, and that we would spend the rest of our childhoods going back and forth, in an overseas tug of war.

He definitely didn’t tell her that.

My father was the eldest of his family, a serious man, almost scary, because you never really knew what he was thinking.

He was pretty reserved, but I suspect that he had a semi-social side he rarely wanted to show.

He was a rebellious child, rumored to have been the child my grandparents had to discipline the most, kicked out of schools for fighting? you name it.

My grandfather was pretty tough on him for that.. maybe too tough.

After he left home for Canada, he spent years not talking to his father, many years, maybe because of the beatings, or because he never was able to please his father entirely, and that continued to eat at him.

Again, I can’t say that I knew who he was, or who he is today.

Every time I think I’ve learned him, he becomes a different person.

He’s dodgy, and I’ve caught him in lies before, I’ve had a hard time trusting him since. More on that later.

Although things were bad, my parents kept it hidden from us for a while.

I didn’t really find out how bad it was until I was 9 years old, and I noticed that my parents were calling me from different phones.. and I thought to myself, why would they call me from different phones, aren’t they together?

Can’t she just pass the phone to my father?

So I asked her, my mom, and she broke the news.

I asked my dad, and he was silent.

Typical.

I was way too young to fully understand what was really going on, and frankly I didn’t entirely want to know.

I just wanted to be a kid..