My Father's Hand

My Father’s Hand! My father left me when I was a baby and all that remained of him… was his hand! The hand that edged its way into the last photo he took of me! As I grew, I used to study that hand searching, rooting for details of personality; a reflection upon my possible characteristics. Did I see a loving hand, skinned in kindness or a selfish one, boned and heartless? So I aged, feeling different, aware of scarring. Occasionally, I tried to break free from solitude but my partner kept whispering me back until I would try to cry but not understanding the steps. I was poor on love; overfed on loneliness but sensing the tremors of isolation in others. Thirty years later and a father’s day email! Then gradually, slow as molasses, I unlocked, I opened my front door, tentatively, anxiously allowing him into my life. Eventually a pleasure, a confidence, a warmth, began to seep, to trickle into my soul. The abandoned child had been found and the next part of my life could begin. I discovered a father, one who wanted forgiveness, and, at last, I could part company with the stings of rejection, the stabs of loneliness which had serrated away at my life. I could now think about all those memories that I used to share with myself, hoping that now I had rediscovered someone I could apportion, ration them with. I yearned for a father who would listen, who would share….. and in time, he did and in time, I learnt to forgive. Ian Souter