If you could sit on this bench ...

"If you could sit on this bench for one hour with any person, alive or dead, who would you choose?"

One of those pointless tweets that always attracts loads of replies. But it did make me think. 

My first thought was my mum. She died when I was eighteen and as she had to go out to work to keep me I didn't really know her. Even though we lived in the same house, I don't think she knew me either.

The Christmas before she died in the February she bought me a sheepskin coat. I had never asked for a sheepskin coat; I had no desire for one. Yet she was so thrilled to give it to me and have me show it off to visitors, that even now I feel guilty for not being really grateful. I'm sure I said I was but underneath that mask I could think of other things I'd rather have had.

So as I say, we didn't know each other so an opportunity to talk as adults would be interesting. But how much would you find out in one hour? Very little beyond the basics. I suppose what I would want to ask would be: why didn't my father show any interest in me?

But that really would be better addressed to him.

In the 1990s I did a master's degree in creative writing in a college in a nearby town. What little interest I had had in my father had led to me finding out that he lived in this particular town. Lack of resources and, to be honest, enthusiasm had stopped me trying to find out more. But even I can look in a telephone directory and find an address. 

Each week I drove past his house to get to college. Once I even sat opposite for a short time. How do private investigators watch people without feeling and acting as if you're guilty of something? But suppose I'd knocked on the door, then what would I say? Suppose his wife had answered. Would she know about me? (It turned out she did.) I didn't want to cause any trouble. 

I imagined what I would say; I wrote stories about characters who met their long-lost fathers. But I never got any further than that. In my imagination the exchanges were angry on my part, regretful - but not quite enough - on his.

Years later when Husband was doing family history research he found out that my father had died but that at the time I'd been travelling past his house he'd been alive though ill.

Now thanks to Husband's research i know more about that side of my birth family but I don't know him at all. So I think he would have to be the one to join me on the bench.

Why did you abandon my mother when she was pregnant? Did you love her? Why were you not interested enough in me to want to meet me? How did it feel to know there was someone out there who was part of you but not part of your life? 

Actually now I've asked the questions I don't think I want to know the answers. Already I know enough about you to not care. 

You could have married my mum, known me as your daughter. Maybe even been proud of us. You chose not to. Your loss.

P.S. Gosh, that wasn't what I was anticipating when I started writing. Quite revelatory. 

P.P.S. I think I'll sit with Husband.