I had a dream that I found a grave on my parent’s property, under a red rhododendron. It belonged to my father’s brother. Which throws it into the weird world of senseless dreams, because to my knowledge no brother of my father has died. But it did start me thinking about that side of the family. I don’t even know if my father has any brothers. I know he has half siblings, but I don’t know if they are men or women, or how many of them there are or if they have children… We heard a rumour that my grandfather had died, but we don’t know for certain. My father doesn’t want to know – the man was an arsehole, why would we want to know anything about him? The world is filled with arseholes… but this one was my grandfather. I don’t think anyone is born awful… something must have happened to cause him to do awful things. I don’t know anything about his biological parents, except that, for some reason, he had a Maori name. Well, for that matter, I don’t know anything about his adoptive parents either, except the surname they passed on to him. Doing a search for that surname (it’s not a common one) turned up an artist, about the right age to be my uncle, and from the right part of the country. But I can’t exactly ring up, can I? “Did you know that your father abandoned a young family to run off with your mother?” They probably don’t even know we exist.
Posted by Fionnaigh at December 1, 2003 06:25 AM