[Z]

My mum when I was growing up, she stayed at home until my early teens looking after us - it was only when my younger brother started secondary school that she went back to work. I love both my parents but I really only feel like I've gotten to know my dad properly in recent weeks - he started sending me an email a day telling me all about his life before I was born/when I was young and it's made me realise how much I have in common with him etc... it's a really lovely thing for him to do and it's something I'll definitely do if I ever have children, it's like getting to know a new friend in a way - you kind of don't realise that your parents had a life just like yours before they became mum and dad... And the way they are is shaped by their past, and it's wonderful to get to know that. In one of his emails, for example, he told me about how he went on a date with this girl who went on to have two kids who went to my primary school (and the eldest went to my secondary school too), one older than me, one younger than me - the younger one I'd stop and chat to if I saw her on the street... and as he was driving her home, they witnessed a motorbike crash into a young woman and she instantly died - they had to be witnesses at the trial and it obviously ruined their night so nothing came of the date in the end. It's so strange to think that, if that hadn't happened, they might have become a couple, gotten married, had kids - and me, my brother, her and her brother wouldn't have ever existed. This was only like a year or two before he met my mum, they were at that age where people started to settle down (apparently the date was my dad accompanying this woman to a wedding!) - and I think just through simple story telling like that, I've come to feel like I'm a lot closer to my dad than I ever realised I was before... sorry for the rant. If you have a dad, talk to him, dads seem to get forgotten about and blamed for a lot of things!