‘I was an awful girl, dad agreed’
Jo Carnegie compared parallel diaries – hers as a teenager and her father’s – and it made her appreciate dad all the more
Being the Daughter From Hell isn’t a label that sits easily with me and it’s one that I conveniently managed to forget until I temporarily moved back in with my parents last year, at the age of 41, and was forced to confront the full truth about my former horrible self. Tucked away on a bookshelf in my old teenage bedroom, I found my battered diary from 1992, written when I was 16. In the front was an inscription from my dad, who had bought me it to try and help me channel some of my feelings.
As I read through the messily scribbled pages, I was in turn horrified and fascinated by this person who was now a stranger to me, especially when I shared some excerptsts with my dad.
“God, I was awful,” I said, hoping that he’d tell me it hadn’t been that bad. There was a delicate pause. “It was… difficult at times,” came the answer. Difficult times are certainly how the furious father of teenage Chelsea Samways, the
British tennis hopeful, may have described last week as he was forced to ground her after she partied with Wimbledon dropout Nick Kyrgios until the early hours.
It may too be how Sir Philip Green felt watching his young daughter Chloe as she cavorted with her new ‘hot felon’ boyfriend Jeremy Meeks. After Miss Green, the apple of her father’s eye, was photographed on a yacht off Turkey with him, her father refused to give his blessing to the new relationship. Arguments over boyfriends, staying out late and drinking too much – these are all familiar to my teenage self and sparked furious arguments between me and my father as I grew up. We had always been close but at the age of 13, my hormones exploded.
I went from being an affable, conscientious daughter from a nice, middle-class family to a self-styled loudmouth who smoked, drank, bunked off school and shot her parents down with death stares just for the crime of being alive. My dad, the setter of curfews, the grammar policeman and holder of the family wallet, bore the brunt of it.
Dad had grown up with a younger brother and at age 18, had joined the RAF. He had come from a world of men – suddenly he had to parent an angry and inarticulate teenage girl trying to negotiate the tricky transition into womanhood. “Most of the time I was at a loss how to deal with you,” he says now. “With daughter daughters, there are things going on emotio emotionally that men don’t recognise. I kne knew you were testing boundaries. Bei Being a parent is like being the e elastic ropes in a boxing ring, yo you have to take the punch punches and come back with love an and understanding and at time times, put your foot down. I did g get it wrong but every pare parent learns on the job.” D Dad also kept a diary at the time and gave it to me to read. I was appalled at wh what I read.
In one entry, he glo gloomily writes: “Jo w wants not a father but a cr cross between a cash di dispenser and a doo doormat.” On a family ho holiday to Tenerife, I was all allowed out clubbing for the first time without a curfew curfew. The next morning he discove discovered a pile of my hung-ov hung-over vomit on the hotel stairs. “I would never have thought t that a daughter of mine would be r responsible, but so it was,” he rec recorded that night. “My feelings we were mixed; despair was probably paramount.” To me, he was just my dad, the person who curtailed my freedom. I never stopped to consider him a human being in his own right, with feelings and fears and aspirations. I was horrible to him but I needed him. Even if I mostly rejected his advice, he was the one person I sought out in times of trouble.
When I got dumped for the first time that year, dad was the one who found me sobbing at the bottom of the stairs. He gave me a hug, told me that my ex wasn’t worth it and cancelled his plans, to spend the evening ferrying me round to see my friends. A few days later when I was still moping around, he was a little less sensitive, telling me: “You might as well get over it now because he [my ex] already has.” Harsh, but he was telling the truth. Twenty years later, he had to scoop me up again when my heart got broken. When a long-term relationship ended suddenly and traumatically at the age of 36, my dad drove 190 miles to help me move out of the house. He has packed up the car with my belongings more times than I can remember: when I went to university, through various flat shares, carrying a TV up the stairs into the first flat I bought, even though he had a bad back at the time. When I had a wobble last year about living at home again, dad gave me another hug and cracked open the Christmas chocolates early to offer me one.
My mum had gone out that night and later he confessed that he wished she’d been there, “because women are much better at that touchy-feely emotional thing”. I think he did just fine. In the past six years, I have led quite a transient life: no husband, house, baby, secure job, or any life marker that you might wish for your adult daughter. When I decided to stay in Australia last year and do a course in holistic counselling, I emailed my dad the syllabus, which was admittedly quite ‘out there’ in parts. His reply came the next day. “I’ve read through it. I don’t really understand but your mother and I support you.” That’s the thing. He doesn’t claim to understand. Dad is a wry and taciturn Scotsman, not big on emotion, but he has shown his love through consistency and action. He has always been there for me and one day he won’t be. Typing these words now in a warm, busy café, I physically sag and my eyes fill with tears. Dad is now 73 and is still in rude health. A pragmatic planner all his life, dad has even predicted the year of his death: 2028 when he’ll be 84. It’s been a running joke in the family for years. I’m hoping this is one calculation he will fall short on.
Still, I do wonder if at this stage in our lives, shouldn’t I be looking out for him? When does the role reversal happen? Does it have to?
“I don’t expect anything from you, parenthood was a path I chose to go down,” he tells me. “Of course, you never stop worrying about your offspring, even when they become adults. But I’ve always been proud of you and now my race is almost run and we’re pretty good chums and enjoy each other’s company, I can look back and say it was all worth it. Even the bad bits. There was always love there, never forget that.”
I never will. I just hope Chloe Green and Chelsea Samways will be able to say the same.
‘Dad is not big on emotion, but he has shown his love… He has always been there for me’