6

Six years ago today, my daughter was born in Kraków, Poland to a tired American father and an even more worn out Polish mother. By standards, it was not a lengthy labour, but, that being said, this little spark of life needed a bit of a prod to make her let loose the safety of her mother’s womb and breathe the warm air of a room full of strangers talking emphatically about their recent holidays whilst the more familiar voices of her parents where caught up in muffled screams or, speaking more personally, the idiotic “wow, cool” of her father as he glanced on in amazement with camera in one hand and his wife’s hand in the other. Within the space of what seemed like a second, I severed the cord that had connected her for so long to her mother, listened on as the cries escaped her lips as this new experience of lungs no longer filled with liquid opened up and watched on as this gore-coated being was placed on her mothers chest next to her rapidly beating heart. Understandable, but still strange in my mind, was the fact that this moment of shock and amazement was over in a flash as the doctors lead my daughter and I away to clean the child of blood and mucous and run through all the usual tests a newborn must face whilst my wife lay back after all her exertion and had the remains of childbirth drawn from her and was given a moment to let her body heal after all the strain and pain. I, on the other hand, was graced with a moment that stays with me every day of my life … after my child was weighed, measured and given the thumbs up from the health department, I was allowed a moment alone with this little girl who was only now shedding her chameleon purple shade of birth to the soft pink that would be needed to fit into this new world. She was wrapped up tightly to imitate the confines and warmth that she was so used to, and she cried with the new sounds now escaping with each breath. Shortly after the nurses left the room to give me this time of bonding, the screams lessened until they ceased altogether as I held her as close as I dared for fear of breaking her. I spoke, I hummed, I gleamed … and my eyes filled with tears. It seemed to me that after all the turmoil and crowds that ushered her into the world, this moment of peace, with a familiar voice she must have recognised through the muffled wall of her mother’s belly, was a welcome respite. I was never quite sure of having a child, but I knew how much it meant for my wife, and I knew there was no one else in the world I would have wanted to discover this territory with, so I put my fears aside and even came to look forward to the day the daughter I had hoped for and received would come into my life … look forward to the days when I would be called “daddy” and the days I would be there for her first steps to her first day at school to her wedding and to her children that may come one day. And as I held her there, I made a promise that I would always be there, that I would always protect her and that I would always, without question, love her with a part of me that I never knew I had in me.

Six years have now passed since then, and in that time, I have stumbled, fallen and risen to my feet on multiple times. I have struggled with this new responsibility at times, and I have lost sight of many things I should have never taken my eye off. I can see that now after being smacked back into reality, but things have changed … some for good, and some for bad. I can be stupid and a complete idiot at times as well as selfless and brilliant for brief moments; I was too careless to hold my marriage together, but after too long of bottling anger and blaming others, I have let go, learned that I have to take a lot of the blame for what went wrong and consider myself lucky that the mother of my child and I can finally speak civilly to each other and continue to raise our daughter, though maybe not together, at least in agreement and with two homes full of love and care; me and money are never constant companions, but I am still inventive and fearless and always find a way to survive and care for those I am responsible for; some days I find myself on top of the world, whilst other days I sink into self-destruction and drink or smoke myself into oblivion; I am proud of many things I have done, but I also hate myself for not being more … not being what I know I could be.

But throughout these conflicts of emotions in this roller-coaster of a life, I try to be there for my daughter as much as a father separated from his family can be, I do all I can to protect her and teach her the best I can so that she sees the world in a humorous, though cautious, light … and I will always love her no matter what she has done or no matter how upset or frustrated I become with something she, as a child learning the ropes, does, whether intentional or not. She is my girl; she is the greatest of gifts the world and, more importantly, her mother has ever bestowed upon me. She grounds me and keeps me responsible, but at the same time she keeps me silly and imagining the impossible. She is my daughter … I am her father … and that is something that I will give my life (and keep my life) to preserve. She is a light I could never imagine myself being without.

Today may be her birthday, but I seem to be the one happiest with this present that I receive and which grows and becomes something more year after year.

Thailand, Laos and Cambodia - Arrival

Growing up in the South can be taxing on the human body when it comes to the heat and humidity. Southern Georgia was bad, but nowhere near as sweltering as the hot, sticky hell of Mississippi in summer, where I had the punishment of spending my high school and short-lived university years. Breaking into a sweat as soon as you step out of a nice, cool shower is disconcerting, along with the feel of your clothing as it turns into cling-film, the atrocious wet stains under your dripping armpits and the sensation of your nether regions, packed oh-so snug into your pants and trousers, now taking on the role of a steam room. Though I do constantly whinge about this discomfort, I consider myself familiar with the feeling of having sweat glazed flesh (and not the sultry type one associates with the glistening bodies of models posing seductively on a beach or in porn magazines … not that I would know about that), but nothing could have prepared me for the sauna-like jungle climate of Thailand, Laos and Cambodia. Maybe this was because I had distanced myself from the warmer climes for a few years prior to this excursion, and the three years I had lived in Scotland must have definitely lowered my tolerance.

As I stepped out of the airport in Bangkok (a place which fools the unsuspecting visitor with an air-conditioned terminal), I was hit with a blast of hot air so intense that I almost broke down in tears with the realisation of what I had got myself into, though I’m quite sure the tears would have evaporated immediately if I had cried. This was hot … stuffy … uncomfortable … and just plain annoying. I quickly shed as many clothes as possible (and legally permissible) and nearly threw away my rucksack as I could not stand it in such close proximity to my back, covering any place on my being where fresh air could get at and cool me off. And then I got on the bus going into the city. At that point, surrounded by individuals radiating body heat and sucking up the available air that didn’t seem to move around but just hung there, I sunk into a melting lump of flesh on a seat and panted like the dogs on porches I had seen so often in the South; dogs that looked up at passing cars and kids on bicycles and seemed to say, “Screw that. I ain’t gonna give chase. It’s too damn hot, boy!”

Now, as much as I hate the heat, I despise air-conditioning to a similar degree. It’s just so unnatural. Feels fake, if you know what I mean. Fans, ceiling or otherwise, are the way to go in my book. And Bangkok was filled with them! Every shop, hostel, bar, restaurant had them … but they just didn’t seem to work unless you found that magical sweet-spot just in front or right below the fan … and those points of paradise were always already taken by a punter who got there and perched before you could. It made you hate your fellow traveller, really.

The locals were immune, and plenty of times, I saw Thai girls all dressed up in denim jackets hopping on their scooters to head off for an afternoon or night out. Jackets, I tell you! They had two or three layers of clothing on, and I was contemplating how uncouth it would seem of me to strip naked and start shoving copious amounts of ice into or onto every part of my body. In the end, I just sat there amazed, wiping my dripping brow, telling myself to just get used to it and drinking cold beverages that seemed to just come right back out of me through the pores of my skin. I longed for their tolerance; I envied their dry skin; and I gawked at the police wearing their skin-tight long sleeves and trousers.

Now, it is said that many men come travelling to Bangkok for the beautiful Asian women and the legendary ‘ping-pong’ shows (a truly amazing, and humorous, sight!). Some of these men come without any evil intentions and just a head full of curiosity, some come for conquest and the chance to add another notch to the proverbial bedpost … and some come because they are just sick bastards. But whatever thoughts there were in my mind of a sexual nature were always quashed by the thought of: “Even if I wasn’t so uncomfortably hot that the idea of another person’s skin against my own didn’t repulsed me, what Thai beauty in her right mind would look at a panting and perspiring pasty white Caucasian boy looking like the recurring bedraggled stranded-on-a-desert-island character at the beginning of Monty Python’s Flying Circus that steps out of the ocean in shredded garments to say ‘It’s …’ just before the theme song starts up?” The malaria pills that you are advised to take also killed any remaining desires (even the desire to live) that I had, too, but more about that vile medication later.

Anyway, I had arrived, and despite my discomfort, I was thrilled to be out of either North America or Europe for the first time in my life. I so wanted to see this culture and experience the tastes, sights and smells. Ever since my youth, I had been a fan of spicy foods, and here I was … in the land of the flaming tongue and burning gut! I was already sweating beyond measure, so why not just dive in, right? The history, religion, colours and terrain were all so tempting, but, to be completely honest, this was not the sole reason I was here. I was here for a much more idiotic reason … I was here because my ex-girlfriend invited me. The plan was to be in Southeast Asia for a month, and this decision based partly on emotion (with a strong dose of crotch thrown in for good measure) would grant me one extraordinary week of highs followed by a week of feeling as though I had spiralled into depths of hell.