The Job in Rotterdam
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At her father's seventieth birthday, a woman finds an old job offer folded inside a family album, and finally asks the question she has avoided for thirty years.
Saturday, October 4th
Dad turned seventy today, and somewhere between the cake and the washing-up, I found out that I have been carrying the wrong guilt for thirty years.
It started with a photograph. Aunt Mei brought an album to the party, and there, between my baby pictures, was a letter folded into a tight square. A job offer from a shipping company in Rotterdam, dated the month I was born. A real job. A good salary. Dad's name typed in capitals.
I always knew he had given something up. Mum hinted at it once, when I was a teenager and furious with him about something I can't even remember. 'If he hadn't stayed for you,' she said, 'he would have seen the world.' I never forgot it. I think I spent my twenties trying to be worth the world he didn't see.
So tonight, while he dried the plates, I asked him. Did he regret it? Would he have been happier if he had gone?
He laughed, actually laughed, and handed me a wet plate. 'I did go,' he said. 'For three weeks. I hated it. I'd have come home even if you hadn't been born. The rain, the food, nobody to argue with.' Then, quieter: 'Your mother liked the other version better. It made me sound brave.'
Thirty years. If I had asked him at sixteen, I would have saved myself so much. Or maybe not. Maybe I needed the story too, the same way Mum did.
I don't know what to do with all this sudden space. Tomorrow I might ring him and ask what else I've got wrong.