Thursday, June 09, 2005

Family Reunion

Today I went out for a meal with my mother, father and brother Alvin for Alvin's 43rd birthday. I haven't seen my father to talk to properly for a couple of years. The meal was my idea and even my idea to invite my father. It went very well. My mother and I bought Alvin a joint present of a DVD player and a couple of DVD's: The Battle of Britain, Airplane and one other I can't recall now as we looked at so many.

It was strange that although I thought things might have been strained between me and my father they weren't. He had upset me about 4 years back, so I hadn't gone out of my way to maintain contact with him. One of the things I was upset about was because he told me he had stopped mail getting through to me from a boy I met on holiday when I was almost 19. I couldn't believe he had done that. It made me wonder how things might have turned out if I had got those letters. Funnily enough, a year or so before his admission I had written a short story on a similar topic.

My parents haven't really bothered with one another for years since their divorce, so Alvin is the common denominator in all of this. We usually hear news about my father via him and vice versa.

Today was nice. I wanted it to be that way for Alvin's sake. The last time the four of us sat around a table like that was probably 10 years ago.

Life's too short.

Don't get me wrong, I can never see me and my father being close as a lot of it is in his hands, it takes two to make a relationship, but at least things can be amicable now when I see him again.

No comments: