Old bastard

Usually this blog has levity at heart surrounding behaving like a bastard. My posts spill bile and invective, but in general it is written for the amusement of me writing it and, hopefully, for you reading it. I have a question though. Is being a bastard acquired, or is it genetic?
I'll follow this with an observation. It was my father's 80th birthday on Wednesday this week and I doubt he received a birthday card. He certainly didn't get one from either or my brothers, 'nor my half-sister. He also didn't get one from me. I would imagine that he spent the day alone, maybe opened a bottle of home-brewed beer in celebration of entering his ninth decade, prayed a bit and then buggered off to bed in his home in Westport. I say I imagine because I haven't seen him in over ten years, let alone spoken to him. My father has not been a very nice man to his family and is probably as much a product of his surroundings as any genetically inherited tendency to be selfish, anger-prone or aloof to those who ought to love him.

A Dutch child, scavenging food from rubbish cans, 1944.

My father was born in the Netherlands in 1934. My grandmother was, according to the only photograph I have ever seen of her, beautiful, willowy and careworn. My grandfather, who I have never seen a photograph of, I am told was an electrician and regarded my father as being backward and stupid. That I think he wasn't very nice in all likelihood tells a fraction of the story of the dominance and domineering he probably put upon his household, I can only speculate. What I am certain of is that when my father turned five World War Two was declared and Germany invaded the Netherlands. When I think of myself at age five and imagine what it must have been like to see first hand the first waves of fighting and then capitulation in the face of overwhelming German force, it must have been incomprehensible and terrifying. Jewish citizens were taken away without explanation and food became so scarce that in 1944 when Germany was retreating through the Netherlands, there was a famine. By accounts, my father scavenged and stole food for him and his family. There were stories of many Dutch reduced to eating grass. I don't know what else he would have lived through in this time either when the Allies and the Axis were fighting their way through house to house. He would have seen sights that were undoubtedly emotionally scarring, losing friends and probably family in the bargain. When the Second World War ended he was eleven.

Fast forward to around 1962 my father was 28 and my mother was 18. He was a recent emigre to New Zealand, leaving behind his first wife and their daughter who had come with him, but then returned to the Netherlands with that marriage ending in divorce. My mother confesses she was naive and quite taken with my father, who was a handsome chap in his day. They married, despite my maternal-Grandmother's misgivings and shifted to Golden Bay where my brothers and I were born. The happiness of the early years of their marriage turned into repeated abuse and assault on my mother. At one point he was advancing on her with a raised fist and my mother defended herself by holding a knife pointing from her chest which punctured one of his lungs. After treating him, our family doctor was said to have made mutterings contrary to the Hippocratic Oath that my mother hadn't finished the job properly. The cycle of emotional abuse continued until when my mother was away with us children visiting relatives in England, my father locked most of our possessions in a garage and went to live with a German woman. Divorce followed and I have no memory of a family life together, just a series of unfulfilling and emotionally rending visits to stay with my father during school holidays. Eventually we moved away from my father and Golden Bay to North Canterbury and the visits petered out. My brothers and I would receive occasional birthday presents but contact with our father was usually infrequent and generally unwelcome. On one of the last childhood visits, I learned that my father had found religion in the Spiritualist Church and believed himself to be some sort of faith healer, involving crystals. My father married again, a union that similarly ended in divorce .

I am fairly certain that my distrust of religion arises out of my father's belief. I do not know whether he sought solace or forgiveness in the eyes of God when he embraced religion, but I would have thought that the path to forgiveness went through making amends with his own family. I would have given anything to have him around to watch me play sport and be there to see some of my personal triumphs such as winning the school speech trophy, my Army passing out parade where I won the top shot trophy, to watch me graduate from university or attend my wedding, but during those times my father never travelled, 'nor made any effort to be part of mine, or my brothers' lives. In fact, when sent photos of my new-born nephew, my father sent them back.
My sister has her own experiences of my father. Hers are harrowing, inordinately unpleasant and are not mine to tell, so I won't elaborate on them. However, for all the damage he has done to our family,I am grateful to my father that I have her and my brothers, but this does not stop me from looking with envy at other families, particularly that of my wife. I potentially shouldn't write this, but in the spirit of openness, I find it quite galling that my wife has such a large but close-kint family when mine is so small and spread across the globe. We have extremely infrequent gatherings, in fact, we haven't come together for a Christmas for about ten or twelve years. Her family come from thousands of miles to gather at events, to meet and hug, to all talk at once and not listen to each other. It is edifying and fulfilling to watch. It is also a reminder that my family had a traditional keystone removed from it very early on.What makes it worse is that her family have all been nothing but warm and loving to me since I insinuated myself into it by marriage. I cannot think of a more generous example of a family. They have had their own family issues, but they are resilient, forgiving and tightly bonded by love. My family is united by the analogous determination of a small nation, tenaciously clinging to its survival as a unit, fiercely proud of its culture and its people.

I would like to point out that I am sober at the time of writing this and tears are not coursing down my face with shame or anger for my father. There aren't any at all. I just feel disappointment, but really, when I imagine my father alone on his 80th birthday, my elder brother and I don't know what to think. One question we both ponder is that is he a man created by his environment, or is he who he is by choice?
Happy birthday.