Tale of a Note
On the remains of love
I found this amongst my mother’s possessions. A greeting card sent with flowers from my dad to my mum on the occasion of my birth.
I don’t know much about my father, Frank Jordan, who disappeared from my life early on, and although I was close to my mum, Polly (he called her ‘Paula’), she was always enigmatic and eccentric to me. Her vocation as a social worker and child protection officer led me to know things I probably shouldn’t have known at the age I did. Not that she was inappropriate in her language, but her views on child safety were determined, outspoken and streetwise. She didn’t take any prisoners in her defence of children and their right to dignity, compassion and protection. I admire her hugely, then and now, for that. If she was flawed, as we all are, it came through vicarious trauma and the alcohol she used to medicate whatever pain she was in.
What will survive of us is love
As for my dad, I don’t know much, except to say he was some kind of suave and intelligent charmer, a self-proclaimed writer who never wrote a word, but also a person of kindness and intellectual substance. Aside from the two, unrememberd, years after my birth, I only met him once, when I was 10. He was, as forewarned, charming, approachable, kind and shallow.
