[...] I often wonder what my own children will make of their grandfather and the name and history they carry. How will they interpret his story, my own for their own future? Up until now I have tried to avoid speaking to them about my father for fear of traumatising them. There are hardly any mementos or memorials to my father's struggle in my house but this year my children will, for the first time take part in some of those celebrations. My two boys, aged eight and five, are if nothing else, cut from the same cloth as their grandfather because they have inherited their grandfather's strong sense of right and wrong. I guess most children their age have a strong moral centre but I am conscious that are already aware of their history. Inevitably they didn't need me to fill in the gaps in the family tree.
I am conscious that my relationship with my father, with their history and community, will have an impact on the direction of their lives. I am loathe to steer or direct them in any way for fear of repeating my father but my sense or at least my hope is that they will, like me, eventually find their own way and make an accommodation through his story. I feel that my job is to ensure that they learn the truth about my father, guide them and leave them with enough clues to give them a secure sense of the past so that they can shape their future.
| That's the end of Ken Wiwa's Observer UK essay "In the name of my father"
posted in articles on November 5, 2005 11:46 PM | t (0)
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The more things change, the more they appear to remain the same...
Too bad I dont know my father
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