On an unexpectedly chilly November evening in Johannesburg, I was having a sushi dinner with my father, his wife, Mary*, and her teenage daughter, Rebecca*, when it was clear from the occasional awkward laughter interrupted by the deafening silence that we were all uncomfortable.
This was my third peek into my father's new life. In 2019, we reunited after years of estrangement. our Mary and Rebecca are not that close to me, so they are practically strangers to me. Not only that, but they and my dad are all pretty quiet, while I'm a lot more boisterous. So the dinner plan was simple: Keep it light. I'd serve them a watered-down version of my meal so they'd have more room to eat.
Things were going well until, after three, four glasses of sake, I made a crucial mistake: I started to feel uncomfortable. The conversation moved from school events and weather reports to what was really going on in my mind: the strangeness of our relationship.
We've never talked about my father's infidelity, his subsequent abandonment, finding out about his remarriage on Facebook while he was in intensive care (another story). In African culture, it's normal to have an avoidant response to emotional conversations, and when I'm at my father and Mary's house, I feel I have to conform. But it's hard. Standing before me in framed photos from years ago that I don't recognize — Mary walking down the aisle, my father taking Rebecca to kindergarten, and my father's photo of me from 10 years ago, the only evidence of our old life together — brings back all the emotions I feel I have to suppress to reassure everyone else. Dinner conversations have ended with me crying.
I suppressed my discomfort to get through the rest of the trip. I told my father about it, begging him to tell her how upset and hurt I was by what Mary said about my experience and my character. My father reluctantly agreed to do so once I returned to Nairobi. But as weeks passed and my attempts to contact Mary went unreturned, I made up my mind. I told my father that our relationship was over.
Of course, I should I want him to be in my life, I love him and I feel guilty about our discord, but what do you mean I'm not so sure?
