A Photo in a Frame

Sometime after my Father passed away, I put my favorite photo of him in a frame and found the ideal spot to display it. The photo perfectly captured his facial expression when he was happy, with a sparkle in his blue eyes and the warmest of smiles. It was taken standing in my kitchen on one of their `Royal visits` when they had been invited to tea. I would clean the house from top to bottom and make sure I had all their favorite things in ready supply. Wiltshire ham and pork pie for him and maybe a Victoria sandwich, salmon and pavlova for her, a traditional spread complete with wine and too much food, food all carefully prepared to meet all her expectations and do them proud.

We were only ever asked over for tea once by them and that was because they had an ulterior motive. He looked so happy in the photo, I treasured it for a long time. That was a time when I was still running never ending rings in the hamster wheel. And his smile.....on the surface it may have been mistaken for a Father`s smile expressing happiness at an afternoon spent at his Daughter`s home, enjoying time together and making happy memories. And for a few years I told myself that exact lie, burying deep inside the truth. That truth being that his smile was merely rooted in the satisfaction that I was `making your Mother happy` as he would of put it. On that day Mother was on an upper and ready to play `Happy Families` with her well trained puppet of a daughter who readily over looked their insidious abuse and cruelty over the years in the never ending hope that finally she was good enough and was making them proud. And look, here was the proof, here I was in my lovely home, with a feast prepared, fussing would they like more of this and that, another glass of wine, cup of tea perhaps while she glowed with glee at the effort I had gone to and he beamed his approval that it was making her happy and he could therefore enjoy a few hours of respite from keeping her appeased. And so he smiled happily at the camera, for all the wrong reasons. And so rare and precious were those moments when it seemed I had at last come up to scratch that I chose to play along, not just on that day but for years afterwards, even after his death, when I would gaze at the photo taking pride of place and return his smile, allowing myself to believe that it was for me rather that only for what I was providing.

Time always seems to alter how we view things. Sometimes as we mellow we wish we had been kinder, at other times as we grow older and wiser we wish we had been stronger. And so it was with me, time allowed me to peel the layers back, clear the fog and see things through fresh eyes. There was the discovery of Narcissism, personality disorders, the revelation that my Father was an Enabler and the slow realisation that I was the victim of abuse, at the hands of both of them, working together, as a team, to ensure I was utterly convinced I deserved everything I got because everything was my own fault and if I only tried a little harder we all could all be so happy.......if I could only be good enough. I was, on that day, when I took his photo. On that day, just for those few hours I was good enough because she was happy and so he smiled, he smiled at me because she was happy. 
After their deaths, as time passed and as I gained so much knowledge and could see with great clarity how very wrong things had been throughout my childhood and particularly as my own children grew and I began to fully understand how wicked they had been......well....I simply could not bear to look at him, so I took the photo down. As the hurt and anger festered in me I begrudged it it`s frame so I removed that too. That photo is lost in the house somewhere now, at the bottom of a box tucked away in some forgotten place. But his smile is still clear in my memory. A fleeting smile which was borrowed for an afternoon and then taken back the very moment she had found me wanting in some way and he had to support her disapproval. I so wanted that smile to be for me, I so wanted him to love me....but then she never allowed me keep anything nice for very long.