I was conceived on a summer camping trip, after my parents – who had been dating quite seriously for some time – had already broken up. I deduced this after my mother died, while reading one of the many, many love letters that my father had written her.
Xavier Pasteger, a Belgian immigrant, was a lover and a writer! He wrote my mother hundreds of letters, in florid handwriting, over the course of their courtship, and began many of them with “ma chère grenouille”, my dear frog. My mother kept them all, and along with a blurry black and white head shot she obtained for me from his former employer at Atomic Energy Canada for my 16th birthday, they are the only artifacts I have of my late father.
I never met Xavier. My grandmother tells a story of how, when she was wheeling me down the street in a stroller as a baby to take me to a nearby park, she saw my father walking towards us about a block or so away. When he recognized my grandmother from a distance, he crossed over to the other side of the street and continued walking, without making eye contact.
Before my third birthday, he had died from cancer.
It is through one of these letters that my mother saved that I realized how late in their relationship I came to be. In my youth, I had often asked my mother what happened to my dad, why they never married. (I knew he had died, but it wasn’t until I was a young teenager that I came to understand that I was truly a bastard, born out of wedlock, and that that choice had been almost exclusively my mother’s.)
My mother, Carola Teschow, was a German immigrant and the first feminist I ever knew. Her story is not for this blog post, but suffice it to say that by the time she became pregnant with me, she had an established career in a male-dominated field, owned a share in a decent house in a nice neighborhood, and had built a life in her adopted country of Canada. By her accounts, my father asked her many times to marry him. But his conditions were a life of tradition: he wanted my mother to stop working, and take care of the household and any children they might have together; this was the appropriate thing to do as a woman, he told her. She declined, and so the relationship ended.
From what I can gather through letters, the camping trip was supposed to be a friendly, pressure-free bit of fun weeks or possibly months after the initial break up. The steamy night in a shared tent that ultimately produced me was not the intended outcome of that adventure… at least not for my mother. His florid written apology post-camping quest must have fallen on deaf ears, as they did not reunite thereafter. Even once he found out that she was with child and asked her – again – to marry him. (Only after I was born to my single mother did she – probably at the suggestion of Child Services – reach out to my father one final time, to request some sort of financial support; he did not argue, and until my 21st birthday, a handsome monthly sum was deposited into my school savings account, first directly through his employer and after his death, an orphan's benefit payment via superannuation program through the government.)
Growing up with my mother and grandmother, I looked to them as my influencers, at least genetically. And yet, my mother’s genes are only part of the fabric of who I am. I know little of my father, and yet I recognize his crooked smile from the one faded photo in my son, and there are patterns in my own appearance and behaviour that very clearly do NOT come from my mother’s side of the family. As I grow older, I think occasionally about the bigger picture of who I am, outside of upbringing and environment.
Xavier didn’t get the girl back, even after he put a baby in her! And it occurred to that baby this morning to examine why, beyond the simple “if we get married you have to stay home“ disqualifier.
From his letters and the fact that they stayed together for more than a few months, I can infer that my mother loved the Belgian’s passion, was fascinated by the way his personality lit up a room, and was drawn to the way he love-bombed her. I recognize these traits within myself. And yet, she ultimately left him.
What was their communication style like as a couple in the early 70s? From her few stories and the tone of his letters, he was clearly thoughtful, but it seems he was also reckless. How did he show his respect (or lack thereof) for her female leadership skills, and how did she navigate their considerable height difference? (She was a good 11 inches taller than him – without heels!) How did they fight, and how did they recover from said arguments? Did he push her too hard, violate her boundaries? Did she withdraw when he pushed, and did he sulk when she did so? Why did she agree to an overnight trip with him after they had already broken up – and clearly didn’t want a continued physical relationship with him (as evidenced by several lines in his later apology letter… was he apologizing for essentially raping her that night?!)
My mother is long dead and unable to tell her side of the story, and of course I never got his, other than what’s left of him in his writing.
As I navigate difficulties in my own personal relationship and reflect on previous associations, I’m left wondering how much of my father I inherited in my personality: I, too, am a lover and a writer. I’m also a boundary pusher – did I get that from him? Perhaps unlike my father, I am recognizing the problem with such a quality, and learning (albeit slowly and late) not to violate those I love the most. Like him too, I am thoughtful yet careless.
Unlike my father, though, I’m not dead yet, and I am educating myself. I am a very serious and committed student. Unlike Xavier, I hope to succeed in my quest to get the girl back.
Xavier Pasteger, a Belgian immigrant, was a lover and a writer! He wrote my mother hundreds of letters, in florid handwriting, over the course of their courtship, and began many of them with “ma chère grenouille”, my dear frog. My mother kept them all, and along with a blurry black and white head shot she obtained for me from his former employer at Atomic Energy Canada for my 16th birthday, they are the only artifacts I have of my late father.
I never met Xavier. My grandmother tells a story of how, when she was wheeling me down the street in a stroller as a baby to take me to a nearby park, she saw my father walking towards us about a block or so away. When he recognized my grandmother from a distance, he crossed over to the other side of the street and continued walking, without making eye contact.
Before my third birthday, he had died from cancer.
It is through one of these letters that my mother saved that I realized how late in their relationship I came to be. In my youth, I had often asked my mother what happened to my dad, why they never married. (I knew he had died, but it wasn’t until I was a young teenager that I came to understand that I was truly a bastard, born out of wedlock, and that that choice had been almost exclusively my mother’s.)
My mother, Carola Teschow, was a German immigrant and the first feminist I ever knew. Her story is not for this blog post, but suffice it to say that by the time she became pregnant with me, she had an established career in a male-dominated field, owned a share in a decent house in a nice neighborhood, and had built a life in her adopted country of Canada. By her accounts, my father asked her many times to marry him. But his conditions were a life of tradition: he wanted my mother to stop working, and take care of the household and any children they might have together; this was the appropriate thing to do as a woman, he told her. She declined, and so the relationship ended.
From what I can gather through letters, the camping trip was supposed to be a friendly, pressure-free bit of fun weeks or possibly months after the initial break up. The steamy night in a shared tent that ultimately produced me was not the intended outcome of that adventure… at least not for my mother. His florid written apology post-camping quest must have fallen on deaf ears, as they did not reunite thereafter. Even once he found out that she was with child and asked her – again – to marry him. (Only after I was born to my single mother did she – probably at the suggestion of Child Services – reach out to my father one final time, to request some sort of financial support; he did not argue, and until my 21st birthday, a handsome monthly sum was deposited into my school savings account, first directly through his employer and after his death, an orphan's benefit payment via superannuation program through the government.)
Growing up with my mother and grandmother, I looked to them as my influencers, at least genetically. And yet, my mother’s genes are only part of the fabric of who I am. I know little of my father, and yet I recognize his crooked smile from the one faded photo in my son, and there are patterns in my own appearance and behaviour that very clearly do NOT come from my mother’s side of the family. As I grow older, I think occasionally about the bigger picture of who I am, outside of upbringing and environment.
Xavier didn’t get the girl back, even after he put a baby in her! And it occurred to that baby this morning to examine why, beyond the simple “if we get married you have to stay home“ disqualifier.
From his letters and the fact that they stayed together for more than a few months, I can infer that my mother loved the Belgian’s passion, was fascinated by the way his personality lit up a room, and was drawn to the way he love-bombed her. I recognize these traits within myself. And yet, she ultimately left him.
What was their communication style like as a couple in the early 70s? From her few stories and the tone of his letters, he was clearly thoughtful, but it seems he was also reckless. How did he show his respect (or lack thereof) for her female leadership skills, and how did she navigate their considerable height difference? (She was a good 11 inches taller than him – without heels!) How did they fight, and how did they recover from said arguments? Did he push her too hard, violate her boundaries? Did she withdraw when he pushed, and did he sulk when she did so? Why did she agree to an overnight trip with him after they had already broken up – and clearly didn’t want a continued physical relationship with him (as evidenced by several lines in his later apology letter… was he apologizing for essentially raping her that night?!)
My mother is long dead and unable to tell her side of the story, and of course I never got his, other than what’s left of him in his writing.
As I navigate difficulties in my own personal relationship and reflect on previous associations, I’m left wondering how much of my father I inherited in my personality: I, too, am a lover and a writer. I’m also a boundary pusher – did I get that from him? Perhaps unlike my father, I am recognizing the problem with such a quality, and learning (albeit slowly and late) not to violate those I love the most. Like him too, I am thoughtful yet careless.
Unlike my father, though, I’m not dead yet, and I am educating myself. I am a very serious and committed student. Unlike Xavier, I hope to succeed in my quest to get the girl back.
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