To my dad

We've had our ups and downs, you and I. It hasn't been easy on either of us, I know.

I remember once, a Saturday many years ago. I know it was a Saturday, because for almost as long as I remember you, Saturday was the day we would go to visit you. I was sitting on my bed in your house, in what we called my room, but it wasn't anywhere close. The wallpaper was a violent burgundy-purple, with an abundance of those particularly awful tea-rose flower-patterns spreading across it, and in patches, maybe where a wardrobe had once stood, there were bald ribbons of wall showing through. I was staring at once of those patches, hating them. Besides the bed, there wasn't anything else in the room, so when you came in you just stood against the doorjamb.

Someday you'll write a book about all of this, you said, trying. I hiccoughed a laugh, and we smiled weakly at each other.

But I often thought about that, over the years. I remember my first thought was that I could never write about this, any of it, because I would be too afraid. I had seen, in the last year, just how easily hurt you could be. Maybe that's the point at which children grow up, when they realise that their parents are just people too, that they lie, and get angry, and petty. And lonely. For a long time the worst moments of my life were those few times I saw you crumble. You stopped being my dad then; you were just a sad, tired man, in an empty house. It felt as if everything solid had gone.

And I knew, if I were to ever write about us, about those years just after the divorce, I would hurt you.

We weren't very good at talking about it. In fact, I don't think you were ever very good at talking about the important things. Sometimes, I felt glad when you got angry at her, because then you would talk to me and some of the many things that had been floating around us would be said. And when it all got better, years later, in a way it got worse.

I remember when you and my brother hadn't spoken in months. He stopped coming to see you, and you wouldn't call him. I turned it over and over inside me for a long time, and then I asked to meet you for lunch. I was so angry by then, angry at you, that when I started to speak, my food untouched, I was crying too hard for the words to come out. The more reasonable you sounded, the more I hated you. I wanted to be hard like you, but I couldn't control it. He's sixteen, I remember shouting, and you're the adult. Be an adult. Please be the adult.

You may have thought you were protecting us, from each other, from the things we might say that would be hard to forget. The thing about not saying the difficult things though is that you can never take them back. How can I apologise for all the things I wanted to say, but never did?

Later, when I started seeing you regularly again, when I moved into your house, these thoughts ate at me. I tried to say I was sorry, by wiping the table down, by being quiet, by staying in my room. I wasn't really me, when I was around you. And it wore me out. So eventually I moved out again.

I'm a talker you see, I talk things out of my system. It has taken me a long while to learn your ways. I think now, in the time we spend together, I'm learning to say the things that are important without saying anything. Not, I'm sorry, but, I love you.

I'll never say any of this to you. But I hope maybe you know.