How I met my father

and found myself

Photo by Miguel Alcântara on Unsplash

I was born to a single parent. My birth certificate has my father listed as unknown.

When I was very young — about 4 — I spent a short period in an orphanage. I don’t know why but I believe it is where I found out about the concept of adoption.

At 6 years old, I spent time after school at a Day Care centre. There was a small girl, younger than me, who had a large birth mark on her arm. I wanted to adopt her — take her home with me and care for her. I didn’t think of it as taking her away from her parents; just that I wanted to care for this little person who was so markedly different to others.

Around 8 years old my mum and I had a standing joke that we were going to see if we could “adopt a Dad”. No-one in particular — just so I could have a Dad. That was the sum total of any Dad discussion with my mum that I remember.

Looking back on these childish inclinations, I can see that I was already trying to establish a typical family that would include a sibling and father.

I grew up in what was then Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) during what I knew as the Bush War. By the age of 10 I had experienced 2 bomb blasts in the city centre and a letter bomb exploding in the postbox next to the car I was in. So it made perfect sense to me when a family member told me my…