Time Travel Tuesday

"Special times with our fathers", is the theme for TTT this week.
Mine are so few, yet they have their own special place in a corner of my heart.

My dad's memory fits in a red patent handbag and is wrapped with a red crocheted shawl. These were his only material presents to me and I can still recall them as the hight of pampering. But they are not the only reminders of his presence. Sometimes, when I look at D, I can see him in my daughter's features.

My parents separated when I was an infant and fought a bitter divorce battle well into my teens. In my childhood mythology, he is the bad guy. I have no memories of his physical presence. Apart from a kiss on my eyes:"Now we will be apart", he said, and I never saw him again. He got married and had two sons, which makes me an only child with two half brothers.

I never hated him. I never felt close to him. Or my mother. Neither of them came to my wedding. Other people and other places became "home" to me. My godmother, a monastery, my best friend/sister C, a summer in my family's rural estate in Greece, my University years in London, all envelopped in a golden light of freedom and independence are what I used to call home. But I never knew the kind of family I was longing for.

Until I got married and God blessed me with the kind of real family I never knew as a child.

One day C came home from work. I was then a SAHM to our two daughters. I opened the door to welcome him and he hugged me tight. I thought something terrible had happened and I struggled to get out from his grasp. He said that that hug wasn't his. It was from another person... My father. C had moved heaven and earth to reach him because he wanted us to have his blessing. My father gave it to us.

Dad, I ask of you no more.