I thought finding my father would be a TV-style reunion. Far from it

While procrastinating over a deadline recently, I turned on ABC TV and watched an episode of Long Lost Family – the British documentary where families are reunited by the heavenly Davina McCall, who, let’s face it, is probably not faking those tears when she witnesses parents meeting their long-lost (now adult) children because the reunions are so incredibly moving. As someone who grew up with an absent father, I adore a good bit of TV reunion action. It provides a comfortably distant, yet vaguely resonant, happy-ever-after.

I had the opportunity to meet my own father when I was in my mid-20s. Until then, he had been the ghost my mother never spoke of (“If you can’t say something nice” and all that). What I did glean about “Dad” during my childhood was that he was some sort of genius, and that he drank too much. I also knew we had a silent phone number because of him but wasn’t sure why. Back in the ’80s you didn’t question your parents (hark, the chortling of my grown Gen Z children).

We’ve seen the tear-soaked TV reunions on windy beaches, but my reality was different.Credit: iStock (posed by model)

Fast-forward through childhood and university; I was working in the Queensland District Court as a judge’s associate. Criminal court provided a bird’s-eye view of family dramas playing out like endless cinematic tragedies; stunning stories involving flailing parents and damaged kids. Then one day, I received a phone call from a paternal aunt I had never met: “Would you like to meet your father? He’d like to meet you.”

Twenty-three years of silence, then my own personal episode of Long Lost Family? Yes! I was ready. Will we look alike? Laugh alike? Will I, too, gain the happiness that only a handheld professional camera shoved in a snot-teary face after decades of absence can capture? On telly at least, this moment is the truth laid bare. Hearts beating through vulnerable rib cages; first “hellos” muffled by mouths buried into down coats (think breathtaking windy Devon coastlines – or in my case, a Hobart parkland). Would it be overwhelmingly wonderful and validating? Or disappointing and downright strange? My sister and I were agog with curiosity – she, a clinical psychologist, me, a wannabe novelist – and obsessed with the tapestry of human motivations that wove together a life. We were all in.

It’s probably not strange we were interested. There is appetite for this stuff. According to research, the Australian genetic testing market generated revenue of more than $350 million in 2024 and is expected to reach more than $1.3 billion by 2030. The largest segment of this market is ancestry and ethnicity testing. Participating in our very own DNA drama was exciting.

We met my father in a park in upmarket Sandy Bay one Sunday morning, opposite his sister’s house. He had a terrible smoker’s cough and was 56 but looked 70. He wanted to talk about himself and barely asked us any questions. Perhaps he was nervous. When we volunteered what we had been doing (fledgling careers in law and psychology), he exclaimed: “You girls are as smart as your father!” The narcissism left me feeling irresolute and disappointed, in him and in myself. The two-year-old in me probably wanted validation, or some sign that he was sad he’d missed our lives.

Still, we got the story of the night I was born. He was “having a party to wet the baby’s head”, while at the same time (supposedly) parenting my three-year-old sister while Mum was in hospital birthing me. Apparently, that night my sister – “the little tyke” – got out of bed and was found in the pre-dawn hours wandering down the road we lived on. He was woken by a man banging on the door to return her. “Goodness! Wow!” we agreed, trying to match his hearty laughter (yes, hilarious!). My sister and I gave each other our wide-eyed, blinking look, both immediately knowing we’d probably had a lucky escape. This unwell, unemployed alcoholic, struggling through life, was our father. It was in stark contrast to his well-to-do, interesting and interested sister (who, I was told, had been raised by a different parent.) It was all pretty sad. But who was I sad for?

The anticlimax of the meeting wasn’t unexpected. Before it, my mother had relayed a single story. After they split in 1974, she returned with us to her Tasmanian family farm and our embracing extended family, and not long after received a letter from her cousin who had spoken to my father. The cousin was “so incredibly sorry to hear that little Sarah [me] had been killed in that tragic car accident”. (Spoiler: There was no car accident.) My father apparently enjoyed creating fiction. In that regard, maybe we’re not so different.

I often wonder if the outcome of long-lost family reunions depends on expectation and emotional need. If you need and hope for love, it must be wonderful if you find it, but awful if things go wrong. In my case, I had few expectations or needs. My mother re-partnered when I was four, and our stepfather was emotionally steadfast, loving and generous. Our mother had also managed to instil in us, during her silent (non-praising) parenting, that we were worthy and loved.

Author Sarah Clutton met her father in her 20s.Credit:

For my sister and me, finding our missing parent was more an exercise in curiosity. It was an interesting moment – a revelatory interaction with a troubled man who happened to be genetically responsible for us. Yet, it was nonetheless satisfying. We now knew. We had a confirmed understanding that genetics are definitely a thing, but they are not the thing. It reiterated for us that family is about love, and about continuously turning up and being present (preferably sober).

I only met my father once more when he was alive, but 18 years after that first meeting, I attended his funeral. By then I was the mother of a teenage boy myself, and it struck me that my father had been somebody’s boy – somebody’s child – who had possibly been in emotional pain for much of his life. If he’d had a challenging early life and suffered from addiction, was he simply unable to parent? From my own parental perch, I tried to let go of my judgment and reach for compassion. Maybe he was just a struggling man doing his best.

As someone firmly attached to believable and achievable happy endings in any story, I was pleased my father found love later in life. As for my own story, I grew up with a loving mother and stepfather who both worked hard to create a happy family. I was then able to create my own loving family. For my sister and me, finding our own truths in a world that had been marked by our father’s untruths was relatively easy, perhaps because we had parental figures who never wavered.

As Mother’s Day approaches, I think about the strength of mothers like mine who thread families together through love and sheer grit. And I think about those looking for long-lost family members, hoping to weave together those myriad threads to create their own happy tapestry. My woven life has been, frankly, nothing short of remarkable. And when I think about that reunion with my father, as sad as it was, I still feel incredibly lucky.

The Remarkable Truths of Alfie Bains (Allen & Unwin), by Sarah Clutton, is out now.

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