Beatle Boy

Perhaps "never what it seemed" would be a good title for the story of any dad? It certainly suggests the complications in this week's objet d'eBay, Real Love. Drawings for Sean by (his father and Beatle/Guru/pop icon John Lennon.

The pictures within were collected and published posthumously by John Lennon's wife and Sean Lennon's mum, Yoko Ono. In her telling of the story, the sketches were a way the father kept trying every day to connect with his second son — but just as his father, Freddie, had not been an accessible and positive guide for him, so it was for John and Julian, the son from his first marriage.

Fatherhood is a cycle. Unfortunately, no matter the best intentions or even the sainthood bestowed upon the father by fans of his "other work," a legacy of damage can — anger, selfishness — is a hard one to free oneself from. And so it is that John caused Sean a loss of hearing as a child that pictures drawn in love couldn't ever heal.