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170

"Hello, Mandy," my father smiles at me carefully.

I hear the people in the backgorund laughing and chatting, and the music is still playing, but it all seems to be kinda blurred.
Everything is kinda blurred.

"Dad?" My voice is an only crack.

My father smiles again. "Hey."

I can't believe that he's standing here, right in front of me. The father who left me years ago.

I look to my mother again, and the back to my father. My mother looks continuously apologizing like she's not quite sure wether it was the best idea to do what she did. My father looks hopeful. Kinda like he's expecting a warm hug.
Eventually, he expects an apology from me, too. For having told him all these years ago how I felt about our broken father-daughter-relation-ship.

An apology he's definitely not getting from me.

My gaze is cold as ice, when it meets his gaze the next time again. "Father. What do you want here?"

He clears his throat. His gaze is searching my mother's, and I realize, that he's insecure, too. But he's not so insecure that he would start talking.

For a long moment we just keep silent and stare at each other, and then he says: "You've grown up. You've become an adult. That's... impressive to see."

"It's been seven years," I say. "People grow up in seven years."

He looks a bit shocked, as if he wasn't aware of this fact. Maybe, he never really thought about it. – Why would he? He had his new family.
Of course he wouldn't think all the time about the family and the life he had left behind.

It seems as a similiar thought came to his mind, cause he says: "Look, Mandy, I am very sorry."

"Yeah? For what exactly?" I raise an eyebrow, and my mother exhales deeply. I know that is not the reunion, she wished it was, but it is the reunion, she expected. I see why she did what she did but I don't understand it. She should've known better. The only thing that prevents me from being mad at her is that she tried to do the right thing. To do what a mother does. With now being married again, she tries to make peace with with the past. That's strong.
My so called father didn't found the strength to do so in the past. It surely needs courage to show up at the wedding of your exwife, agreeing to a meeting with the daughter you haven't seen for almost a decade. But that doesn't change anything about the fact that he didn't find the strength in the past. He was the adult. The so parent. He had to call. To show up. To try.
He. Not me.
A simple "I'm very sorry" would never change a single thing about that. It won't be enough.

"For what are you very sorry for?" I repeat my question.

"I ..." He doesn't seem to find the right words.

But I do. "You have to specifise for what exactly you're sorry. Is it for you and mum getting divorced? No problem, I am over it. And she is obviously, too." I wave at the pavillions and then laugh kinda bitterly. "Is it for not being there for the last seven years? For not showing up at my high-school-graduation? Or when I didn't pass the drivers-license-test and had to do it again, but you weren't there though you promised me when I was a kid? Is it for not being there at great-grandmas funeral in England, when mum and I had to stand at her grave grieving, and we had to endure all the peoples questioning gazes? Or is it that you never called for any birthday, and that you didn't even had the courage to show up at my eighteenth or at least at my twenty-oneth? – Not that I expected you to show up, but you know ... kids innerst wishes – and that was probably one of them I've been even hiding from myself – until I was feeling this disappointment. Again." I raise my eyebrows, only too good feeling the pain in my chest. "For what exactly are you sorry, father?"

***

📝🎶
Mandy's songbook

[L.O.V.E. is L.O.S.T]

or: bittersweet

It's bitter and it's
sweet
How I still want
And how I still need
The one that left
The one that left me

It's sad and it's
crazy
How some feelings never go
How some feelings never leave
How the pain never fully goes away