I turn 30 in June. Among the list of things I feel I can boast about – running a marathon, raising a healthy, happy baby girl, mastering shorthand – the fact that I’ve had three dads feels like a particular privilege. The fact that I’ve lost three dads, less so. Let me explain.
My biological father, Derek, had ginger hair and drank cherry cola. He liked British pubs and American baseball. I’m not so sure he wanted children, but he got one anyway and I’m told he liked me very much.
We didn’t have very long to get to know each other. Derek loosely shared custody with my mum as I was growing up, but Mum and I lived abroad for a time, which meant my relationship with Derek was quite disjointed. In many ways he was a stranger, but one with huge significance attached.
I’m not sure he knew my favourite toy, or the name of my best childhood friend, and I don’t really remember what hugging him felt like. Instead I have a set of very specific memories. He used to buy me little bear figurines every time I saw him and would take me for milkshake at the cafe round the corner from his house. He once told me off for throwing the plastic wrapping from a loaf of bread into the lake near his house after we’d fed the ducks. I must have been about six. I felt uncomfortable and embarrassed, scared that he no longer liked me after my faux pas.
I remember, aged eight, my mum telling me Derek was poorly. I remember seeing him at the hospice – I made him a daisy chain from the gardens outside – and I remember being struck by how different he looked and scared of the tubes going into his nose. I remember him telling me he loved me and later discovering those were the last words he said. I remember going to his funeral.
I have Derek’s jawline and his pale skin, a touch of his nose, perhaps. I have to get my moles monitored in case I also have his predisposition for skin cancer. I’ll never truly know what other traits of his I have, though I’m sure they are there. I have his DNA and now my daughter shares some of it too. He was my maker, or part thereof, and I’d love the opportunity to meet him again.
My dad, Allen, met my mum when I was about 18 months old. He was loud, charismatic and gregarious; he swept my mum off her feet. He didn’t have children of his own but he liked Mum and liked the look of me too, I guess. I called him Dad and made him play Robin Hood with me.
He took me sledging and dislocated his shoulder protecting me when we hit a bump under the snow and were thrown off. We went camping often, but he snored so loudly that I made him sleep outside the tent, under the car. He and my mum separated after seven years, but he decided not to separate from me. I saw him every other weekend and every Wednesday. He took me on holiday regularly to Tunisia, Egypt and Thailand, helped to fund my university education and when I was older I worked with him for six years.
During my teenage years he persevered with our relationship even when I hated him – which, I’ll admit, I did a lot. Unlike Derek, he met my best friends plenty of times, but never remembered their names. I also doubt he knew my favourite colour. Dad was too busy, too energetic for the small details. He climbed mountains (including Everest) and chopped down trees and made television programmes, so he never remembered I hated cherry yoghurt or fig rolls and persisted in buying them for years.
I have Dad’s love of television, journalism and travel, and I like to plaster my walls with photographs as he did. He was my maker too, or part thereof, showing me the world and developing my sense of adventure and ambition.
At this point, it’s probably wise to segue into dad number three.
Chris arrived in my life when I was 10. When I met him, he had a long ponytail and a goatee. His voice was deep and gravelly and he smoked 40 a day (until Mum made him quit, but not before she made him cut his hair).
I didn’t share my DNA with Chris, or a long history as I did with Allen, but I knew from the outset that he wanted me to be a member of his family, and so I was.
Chris was interested in what I liked and what I didn’t. He knew the names of all my friends, and knew their likes too. He knew my favourite book, nurtured my love of English, embraced my quirks and flaws, mediated between me and my mum, and was never hesitant in demonstrating how much he loved us both.
Chris was generous to a fault. He would come home from trips to town with at least three copies of the Big Issue. He was generous with life, in fact, and channelled so much effort into love.
When I was 17, just before I sat the English AS-level he had helped me prepare for, Chris died of a heart attack. My mum told me when I got home from school. I remember his funeral. I remember his voice. I’d give anything to hear it again.
In December 2013, Allen was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and was given six months to live. The day he found out, he attended my masters graduation and I bollocked him for seeming uninterested. Shame on me. Though in true “Dad” style, he gave cancer the middle finger and stuck it out a year and half, walking me down the aisle at my wedding and meeting my baby daughter in April 2015, four days before he died. I’d give anything to bollock him again.
So that was strike three, meaning I’ve lost a father every decade of my life. The grief is sharp and steely and regularly takes me by surprise. I thought I saw Dad drive by me in a car the other day as I waited at a junction. Of course, I didn’t, but the tears were angry and sudden. And when I came across my A-level marks sheet in a folder a year or so ago, my heart lurched at seeing the results I never got to share with Chris. But those occasions remind me that I’ve been built by three men – from Derek’s DNA to Chris’s generosity to Allen’s dedication.
My dads were life-giving and life-affirming in different ways, fathers in different ways. They each chose to love me or to keep me, or to be a father to me, and that makes me incredibly lucky.
So I suppose this is a tribute to my fathers, and to your fathers – fathers in general. They make us, shape us and eventually leave us, so let’s make sure they know we love them.
