We Did Our Best

Naomi was always a Miss Primp and Proper. She never had dirty hands or dishevelled hair. She never smelt bad or looked unkempt. If the food we gave her did not look the way she thought it should look, she would not eat it. I have no idea where her holier than thou attitude came from, but as a child, and thereon into adulthood, she was pompous and pretentious. She, like the rest of them, loved and trusted her parents until the day she went to school, and unbeknown to us, was given sex lessons. From that day onwards, she hated me. She could not accept my role as her parent, and I became her abusive father, and Kay became the person who she should protect from her dad. She never ever lost that attitude towards me. She thought I wanted Kay for myself and was trying to keep her from my children. She became ultra jealous of me and extra protective of Kay. She would sneak around the house, trying to catch us in the act that she saw in her lessons. She nearly did once. Kay and I were in our bedroom having some private time. Because our kids would just burst in the room without warning, we had a key lock on our bedroom door. She came to our door and tried to open the door. When she could see it was locked, she started banging and kicking the door. Suddenly everything went quiet. She had somehow secured one of the keys from the door and came back and unlocked it and burst in to find Kay and I in bed. She never let us forget about that and would frequently mention it in front of friends and family and laugh at us in disrespect.

Once upon a time Naomi gave me doubt about how loyal she was to me as my daughter. You see, she never really liked me that much. She loved me but hated my relationship with her mum. After she married she would easily cause waves between Kay and I and frequently suggest how much better off Kay would be if she left me and found herself a proper man to make her happy. Like she thought that Kay was unsatisfied with me, something that Kay had never given me reason to think. Anyway, I told her a family secret one day, something that was sensitive and could have been volatile if my judgement was incorrect. A skeleton in the closet, so to speak. I asked her not to repeat anything I was about to tell her and confided the secret to her. I really wanted to know her level of loyalty towards me. I think it was less then 24 hours before she had broken my confidence and told Kay what I had asked her not to. Naturally, Kay was not happy as the family secret had been reveal and it involved Kay. Now Naomi knew how potentially explosive it might be to break my confidence, but did it anyway. She did not care less about the upset it might cause or the damage to a father and his daughters relationship. From that moment on I could never, ever trust her again. But the strangest thing is no matter how much Naomi put me down or showed her contempt for me I still loved her and was proud of her. From the moment she was born, and I nearly fainted, if not for the intervention of the nurses, I instantly loved her. Her betrayal of my trust came after she was married and had been under the influence of Oliver. Although she had annoying pedantic ways she was a good daughter. She was, of course, her mothers daughter and did everything with her and it was so very satisfying to see. Kay always wanted a daughter to spoil so was very happy when Naomi came along. I partially nearly fainted at her birth knowing how happy Kay would be, the rest was the bright hot lights and the stress of pushing everytime that Kay pushed but, of course, the pinnacle of the event was in watching the miracle of life spring into being after she was delivered. Her first breath. An event, in its entirety, that I shall never forget for as long as I live and I treasured her life there on in.

I do not know where she got her ideas from or who she was listening to, but she had these preconceived ideas of what her future husband would be like. I never came up to her expectations of a husband or father. I was never a 9am to 5pm man for any length of time before I became bored of it, but she thinks I should be collecting a gold watch after years of service and paying my NI, income tax and pension regularly and be a regular conforming guy, or better. But I am not a regular guy. I do not like conforming to things I disagree with. I am good old Derek Smart, a unique individual with abstract ideas. I do not conform to who she, or society, thinks I should be, in her upper-class mindset. I do not need a posh company car, like a 4×4 BMW X5 M Sport, I do not have friends in the office to socialise with, and compete with, I do not go to Christmas office parties and indulge in sucking up to the boss and his wife. I am not a company man, like Oliver, I am Kay’s man, a bit of a know it all, do it all, expert in nothing in particular but having achieved plenty. I need no recognition from my work colleagues, I am not after anybody’s job, I am not a cutthroat. I do not need to go to Majorca every August with my family and Mark’s and Spencer for food shopping every Thursday. I needed, and completed, taking my family on an arduous road trip across the USA, twice. I do not need designer clothes and name brand home appliances. If I did, I would buy a broken one, cheap, and fix it for a fraction of the price. I do not need to show off a 4×4 BMW X5 M Sport in my drive for my wife to drive, and frequently damage, and for me to tell my poorer friends what I have, whilst I take the train to work. I do not want all that pressure. I am living my life as I am and want, I am happy in doing so. My kids never went short. OK they did not walk around every waking hour wearing a genuine Manchester United football shirts, shorts, trainers and socks bouncing a league football like a robot, because I am fanatical about football and want my kids to be the same as me, and support a team hundreds of miles away, but they enjoyed kicking a ball about as well as climbing trees, making dens, going camping, making a stream dam with clay and going fishing with rod and bait in hand. They never once put on a football shirt just to make me feel good and proud. I never needed to feel good by showing my mates that my kids had the latest football clobber. I do not judge a man by his wealth, successes or his possessions I judge a man by his heart, his empathy, and his compassion. I am not in that rat race; I never have been. Naomi and Oliver needs that in their lives and her husband needs that in himself. But look at the consequences of the realisation of the desires of their hearts.

She lost her religion as a result of her pomposity and Oliver solidified it by his in-depth investigations and scrutiny into any negative aspect of the Mormon church that was a let down by the members, like Mark Hoffman, the wayward Bishop. The bigger the transgression or indiscretion the more he would sink his teeth into it and at every opportunity would express his findings, especially to Naomi. He did not like her religion and found it all a bit strange. At any given opportunity he would divulge the negative results, which would usually be hearsay. He never once critiqued the doctrine, just the administration conducted by imperfect men and their failings. He does not critique the doctrine because he does not know it. He has never read it with the spirit. In my opinion, he took Naomi away from the influence of her parents to debrief her. He had job offers in and around Cardiff with similar prospects, but it was not far enough away to allow him to control and manipulate her. He then fattened her up, gaining stones in weight, which gave her an inferiority complex, so no other man would take an interest in her, especially when he started losing his hair and going bald-headed, he stript her of her confidence building religion and brainwashed her empathy and compassion out of her. That is why Naomi is like she is today. A virtual recluse.

Now is the time for me to kick the dust from my feet of Naomi. I enjoyed raising her and playing a part in her every success. I regret the harsh words we have had since she married and the beef stroganoff she wore as a child. I greatly missed her when she moved 120 miles away thinking she was climbing the ladder of success and therefore achieving social acceptance. I never knowingly tried to take her away from her mother and resent her thinking I did. I hated her rolling up the knee length school skirt when she was at school and catching her smoking a cigarette at church and was unhappy and disappointed when she decided not to attend church anymore. All in all though, I loved raising her up into adulthood but very much resent he emancipation of her parents. I am no longer going to try and make amends with her. I have little time left which I want to spend happily with Kay. Naomi has played her part in ruining our end-of-life experience by her emancipation and exclusion from our grandparents. None of my children have gotten their assumptions quite as wrong as Naomi has. Assumptions she turned into false fact. I have offered many Olive Branches to her; however, the next one must come from her.