This is a picture of my sister and my dad. I have similar pictures where the image contains my dad and me. We cuddle close and you see us smile. You see a father and his daughter.
A picture, they say, is worth a thousand words. But it doesn't always reveal the hidden stories.
The story that I will now tell is not 100% accurate. It's based on actual events but my memory has grown fuzzy and so many details have become fictionalised for the sake of the narrative flow. Also, as the youngest in the family, I was not always a party to each and every narrative as you will see.
In 1968, a year before man had stepped on the moon and way before the internet, a young eighteen-year-old scrolled her finger down a line of names in the telephone book. There were quite a few that matched the one she was seeking, so she courageously rang them to ask her question. But, none were the man she was looking for. It turned out this was not the time.
A year later, I was born.
Approximately thirty years passed, and that no longer eighteen-year-old continued her search. This time, with the advancements in technology, she found her quarry.
In the Parker household, the phone rang. "I'll get it," I said, opening the kitchen door and making my way to the ringing phone in the nook beneath the stairs. "Hello."
The female voice on the other end asked her question again. "Hello, can I speak to Peter Parker?"
"Sure, one minute," I said to the voice and cupped the receiver before shouting, "Dad, it's for you."
My dad, making his way from the living room, mimed the who is it question. I replied with a shrug of my shoulders handing him the phone, returning to the kitchen, leaving the door slightly ajar and smiling as I heard him put on his telephone voice, "Hello, this is Peter Parker."
Inside the kitchen, my sister raised quizzical eyes to me and I shrugged my shoulders once more. The kitchen was abuzz with children, chatter and the usual family chaos that goes hand in hand with three children and a baby. My mum was sitting with a smile on her face watching the proceedings but didn't inquire about the phone call.
After a while, realising my dad was still talking, my sister and I became curious. It was unlike him to spend too long on a phone call and we noticed he'd shut the kitchen door. "I wonder who that is," my sister said and I nodded my agreement but noticing a pungent smell emanating from my daughter, I took her from my niece's arms and took her into the bathroom to change her nappy. I was followed by my eldest niece, while my nephew and younger niece clamped their fingers to their noses, laughing and staying in the kitchen.
When I returned my dad had come into the kitchen and, on my arrival, he said, "That was Linda, my daughter." Seeing the stupified look on my face he began to explain.
From childhood, I had known that both my parents had been married before. My eldest brother was my mum's son from her first marriage. He had always been a part of my life although married the year before I was born in 1968.
The same year that my then eighteen-year-old sister had scanned the phone book in search of the right Peter Parker. However, our phone number had been entered under my mum's name and sat at the top of the list as her name began with "A". An unknown barrier to my sister's search.
For the majority of my life, I hadn't known I had another sister. I hadn't known that my incredible, loving dad, who I'd always looked up to, had chosen to let go of his bond with his firstborn.
My father explained that following the end of his first marriage, both he and his first wife had found new partners. He had met my mum. She had met the man that Linda grew up to call dad. It was agreed, or so I was told, that everyone thought it would be less confusing for Linda to have just one dad. I guess no one thought it necessary to ask the five-year-old what she thought.
But now, as I look at the picture of the woman in the picture with my dad, who I now call my sister, I wonder, how different would my life have been if my dad had put his name in the telephone book instead of my mum. What would it have been like to have two older sisters right from the start?
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