Modern Dads, page two
May 2004

Scott Krywiczniak's narrative poem about finding Harry, his troubled biological father. Along the way he collected three other dads; Jimmy, Jan and Terry.

Extrageographic See also: > Modern Dads 1/2 > Modern Dads 2/2 > Numb fingers

Seven years on in 1978, when I went to live at my nan and granddad’s home, all week I’d waited for this moment and could hardly wait. Thought my mum was going for a couple of weeks when she waved bye at the gate in March. Never knew I wouldn’t see her again for a year and a half. Their house was a jewel, with its chocolate box garden… the house a loan from the council; though neither a thank you nor a pardon for this Polish refugee. Many thought he was an Itie or gossiped he was the Hun, not a wounded ally, sniper shop in Monte Cristo, high above the Mediterranean sea; shot in an Italian vineyard by a German maestro in 1943.

When they first got the house it was a proper shit hole, only offered out of civil necessity, a false and broken charity. Despite all life’s tragedies, my grandpa’s eyes and heart never hardened and he built breathtaking beauty where once stood only mud and debris. His garden his Eden, his house his Taj Mahal. I’d never seen such colour until this, nor shall after, what I saw in their garden: the wild tamed and nature marshalled.

The front was crazy paving and a mass of flowers with aromas to make you swoon. Behind this, to the left of the house lay a perfect lawn, crisp under a clear lit moon, awesome under an androgynous dawn; grass as soft as feathered pillows. The image would seize strangers as they walked past. At the far end of the lawn stood a weeping willow, its emerald tresses teasing the floor, that would ripple like a green sea on a breezy day.

The back garden was vegetable practicality. Beyond the back garden and its bordering apple tree, the land gave way to a valley, a stunning silent stretching scene that could bring about a soul dipping sigh, even out of the most stony mind. What always struck me was how the world can look so beautiful to any two round eyes.

Dad: Terry. My fourth Dad

1979 brought big changes with our move down south. A new home, name and father too - a lot for an eight year old. My father by name was a man of blue silence, blonde and moustachioed: a man of distance, a man of Pluto. Terry, the Viking throwback, was my fourth dad, remember well my mum asking me if I’d call him just that. Ok, I said, it meant nothing to me that word dad. Though pleasing my mum did. I’d missed her this past year, whilst she’d done her thing in Norwich. Picking berries in France never did materialize. Said she never had a chance after she caught my new dad’s Viking eyes.

Still recall the image of her before she left for Norwich cast in colours before my eyes. Guess she never realised that a year and half is like a life time to a child. She had this patchwork leather coat that had all the colours known to sight; recall exchanging twigs of love at the bus stop, whilst we waited in line. We kept those twigs for what seemed like an eternity, a way each of us could keep the other in mind, a Beech tree bind that stretched hundreds of miles. More meaning in those fragile twigs than the vast oceans of time… love spills inside of us, spills in places we can see or find.

My fourth dad was much better than my second, but then he wasn’t bi-polar of course. Terry was a father by name, not like Jimmy Roberts - a father by mistake. Terry spent time with me, played games, even feigned an interest in boy-hood sports… and beat the fuck outta me whenever I broke the law. Terry laughing and playing with me at the Subbuteo, Terry cracking suddenly under the pressure of a boy completely out of control. Terry man of Pluto. Would have to beat me black and blue; had learnt the hard way that the only way was the way of the boot.

But dad number two made dad number four look like an angel born, minion of Zeus. In the stakes of despair with dramatic flare, Jimmy Roberts was unparalleled, a silly little man, a curly headed buffoon. A blind hydra in reverse. Liked to keep to iron rules and then tried hanging me out of windows when I forgot them. Can still feel that flint stone pebble dash panic, my five year old fingers searching for something to hold, upside down and out of hope.

Jimmy Roberts man of strange will and self diagnosed remedies. This lesson was supposed to stop me kneeling on window sills. Stupid me. Like when he flushed my head down the bog was supposed to stop me peeing on the seat. Poor Jimmy. His mentality like an infection, a diasporal broken damn. He would go on repeating his lunacy, his misfiring rational, well in to the next century: stuck on a Ferris wheel destiny. Alight and spinning in the wrong direction was just how it was meant to be. Nothing could stop it, not doctors, drugs, lovers nor he.

Kidnapped brother

Jim never had a chance of holding on to my mum, Jan and me. He realised this and when my mum left for Norwich, he kidnapped Jan. Held on to him for a whole week, my mother desperate and pregnant, nearly miscarried my brother Keene.

Police found Jimmy and Jan in a seedy Manchester district. Jan unharmed, Jimmy hysterical and repentant, claimed a momentary lapse of reason: more like a momentary slip with paternal sensation. A slip that blew yet another Jimmy fuse. Jimmy’s name in the papers, his face on the six o’clock news.

Though in no time at all out of custody, out of prison, left to prowl on some other poor unsuspecting victim. Jimmy’s fatherhood lasted three years. Terry’s twenty or more, so as father’s go I didn’t get the best of draws, of this much I’m certain, this much I know.

So whilst in search of my first dad, I reminded myself that I was bound to an inevitable father curse. Knew Harry lived in Blackburn, found his name and number on the electoral register. Blackburn hadn’t changed much in thirty years, wondered if he had. A town where progress went unnoticed, a people hooked on suspicion and racial fears; a people lost whilst ignorance did its worst. Racial tension like a muddy mixture in a bottle, once kicked old issues stirred, conflict never laid to rest, sense and reason never truly disturbed.

Dad: Harry. Knocking on his door

A hundred thoughts raced through my brain as I kept knocking on Harry’s door: not just how much had he changed, but whether he was just sitting there on his fucking arse, flicking through the tv channels, like he probably did most days.

Suspicious of faces and visits he hadn’t pre-arranged, suspicious of those that will not go away. The man who opened the grey, wooden door was odd at first glance: his face poker and severe, the features had tumbled south in facial avalanche; gravity had grown impatient and driven them down.

He stood there at his door watching my mouth say things, things that made this man sweat, made this man unsure. This was not what I’d expected, as I’d sat dumbfounded and fixated at his name and address on the voters roll at Blackburn’s county hall.

Vaguely imagined Harry to be the mirror image of me: six foot tall, brown of hair, blue of eye, Caucasian. But the man opposite me was painfully thin, hunched and old, body like a bent stick, a body ill devised. His face a picture of what age does. A bags and lines panoramic. But this man only looked as old as Harry would be - fully fifty-five. One hand was shaking whilst it held his flat door open, the other fully occupied with a half smoked joint that still burned, pointed to the floor.

Hi. I’m looking for Harry Richards. Is he in?

Aye, that’s me, the man replied, quiet and grim, hoping I wasn’t the police or Jesus’ dearly devoted. I figured Harry wasn’t in need of any spiritual conversion, or Poll Tax non payment reported.

I stood stock still: this was not what I’d ordered. The weight of the moment invisible yet enormous. Harry’s eyes were squinty, narrow and nervous - his joint had made this visitor distant and distorted. My tongue seemed stuck. My throat dry.

My voice was hoarse with our histories impediments. My lungs heavy with the pressure of a forced father and son divorce, the difficulty of the next few moments inevitable… Then the silence broke effortlessly, as I stood in my dad’s corridor, my voice borrowed, it seemed, another’s thoughts, another’s words spoke out from me, as I moved awkwardly and uncertainly.

My maker standing opposite me, symbolic of all the failings of destiny. Was this a new world begun? Or a lousy mistake about to burst?

I'm your son

Hi Harry. I’m Scott, your son.

Harry’s eyes fair widened, for sure - his face a picture of a mouth and mind held hostage. Words said so easily. So simple. So light. Yet such words are heavy luggage, like a riddle, some recondite mystery to a man who never understood the implications of history. Harry shifted in a pause that seemed to lap the Universe.

I was certain I could feel the surge of his heartbeats in mine, as convention forced his nod and reply:

Ya alright? Another pause, like the space between the oceans waves: Ya seem to be doin’, er ….well for ya’sel.

It wasn’t a question, nor my hearing a mistake. It was a health report, Harry accepting that his genes hadn’t fallen short in me. I’d forgot I’d got on my smart work clothes, a laptop computer hung neat on my body made of this man’s chromosomes.

Impossible, my brain thought, that this man is my biology. That I’d once lived in this man’s bollocks by my own accord. My only saving grace personal idiosyncrasy, and that my soul was born alone. But the hardest lesson in a way is the fact that’s all some father’s are: the same blood, the same DNA. But in ought else they may as well be aliens from afar.

So I’d turned up at his flat and announced, I was Scott, his son that he hadn’t seen for thirty odd years; and I guess I got what I expected as he was suitably shocked. What now?

He didn't invite me in

The first weird sign was that he didn’t invite me in; second was that he held this expression like a badly smacked arse… perhaps this was how Harry always looked. Bad signs have a habit of multiplying and right enough that’s what happened later when I met him in the pub at the top of his road.

Same pub he used to meet my mum in, the cheap and the cheerless Hole In The Wall. It turned out Harry couldn’t recall his twenties or his thirties, so I was surprised he could remember me and my mum at all. He kept saying that it felt like a dream this whole episode. I find it difficult to reassure people that they’re in the waking world when this they doubt themselves… Asked if I hated him as well.

I agreed to meet him again in three days time, in order to let the fact that I really did exist settle in his confused mind. He feared his nightmares were getting more lucid and real, that I was just a figment of his imagination, a trick of the light.

His eyes, a blue ink splash shock, began to grow in confidence. He asked also if I could bring my mum, and behind those blood-shot eyes I sensed real tears… claimed he still loved her after all these years. Before I let sentiment carry me away, I remembered a pregnant kid believing the same, walking home alone along lonely Lancashire roads.

And I figured whatever Harry’s love was it probably didn’t amount to much. So I turns up with the bad news at the self same pub they’d used in their youth, and Harry’s soon all pissed off; his face a picture of all hope gone, all hope sunk, his legs unsteady, Harry drunk before twelve o’clock.

His world amounted to nowt

By the time I left, three hours later, he’d whinged unimpressively about a life that felt empty, a life that had been lost, was depressed no doubt that his world amounted to nowt. He’d nearly fallen over twice and failed to say one word that I didn’t respond to with what?

I was really beginning to feel a fool about this genetic inquest, this genetic journey.

Either Harry was a champion mumbler or his brain was pure addled with all the acid and lignacaine he’d dropped before I was two. Mum had agreed to steal the lignacaine off the Dentist she used to assist.

Recall being shocked. Never let it be said that Harry would miss an opportunity whenever one knocked. Tiring of his moans I’d turned my attentions to the eighteen year old bar maid, an under-grad, both our brains desperate for intelligent company, beyond the bar room babble of Harry and dumb come ons for free. Under my dialogue to the cute girl I’d hear Harry’s mumbled words, pushed out between inexpedient drags from his fag:

Yer in there mate; that’s a sure shag. After I didn’t respond his worry wouldn’t wait - Are ya straight son?

Parent undercut

No expectations I’d said to myself. Uhm. Never quite works out that way does it? The sum of history always impossible to judge. When I left Harry in the pub he was practically falling over, his giro a disappearing cover that like all his retreating lovers he’d come to expect very little from.

Looking at him it was hard not to feel disappointed and undercut. This meeting, I suddenly understood, could never have been anything more than it was.

The past, I shall forever remember, serves us as a good map. The future, it was clear, was not gonna be no Hollywood. But I was not sad. I’d learnt long ago that my mum was the best dad I’d never had.

Scott Krywiczniak - May 2004