father’s day – sea.ess.em.jay

Dear Dadadadad,

It’s almost Father’s Day. A funny day, where we’d have tempted you with soap on a rope, socks and silly mugs. The last Father’s Day-like moment I had with you was the day you met your first grandchild up close (she was born on Father’s Day that year), and I gave you beanies to keep your head warm. Your hair was thinning. No, let’s be honest. It was falling out. That big, tough bush of hair that I seem to have inherited was withering away a little as your sickness progressed, and you’d texted me to say your head was cold. I tried to fix it.

A few weeks later, I’d get those beanies back. I held them against my cheek and I could still smell your hair, even though I’d just walked into our house to be with mum, because you’d just left the planet. I stuffed them into my bag, and kept them. I didn’t wash them for a year. I’d just hold them every now and then.

But then Winter came around again and I looked at them. I realised, you’d want me to wear them. I think of you when I hear this song, and it rings in my head each time I put those beanies on. You wouldn’t want me to be cold, you’d want me to be warm, in Winter.

Which is why I’m not going to be without you today. I’m not going to feel your absence, but, rather, celebrate the idea that – somehow – you’re still here.

You used to say our genes are our legacy. That our DNA is what is our afterlife, and that the little pieces of you that live on beyond your body are what continues you. I agree with you on that front, for a lot of reasons.But, Dad, it’s not just that. It’s more. Sometimes, life brings you back to me and it’s not DNA.

Have I told you about the Shmoo? I have, I know, but I don’t think I’ve told you this part.

You see, the Shmoo and I have been together now for what seems like a lifetime and feels like just a day. He puts up with me, he takes care of me (most especially when I don’t want to be) and he listens when I gabble off twelve million ideas of how I’d like to save the world but will never actually fulfil. He is tolerant (an essential strength), patient, kind and supportive without question.

But, Dad, I gave him uphill when we first started taking an interest in each other. I was all walls, spikes and boundaries. I was needy and aloof all at the same time and I did a lot to deter him. He took the “deter” as just an abbreviation for “determination”.

Slowly, he worked away at my walls. He didn’t push them over and ignore them, he just sat on the other side of them and talked to me through a little hole he’d chipped away at for a while.

And then, well, you know how I went to Cape Town for a bit and he took me to dinner and seemed weird, and the next night he came over with cake and Post-It Note.

And that’s how he started loving me, and I, him.

One afternoon, while we were sitting on the steps of my house as your first grandchild pranced around the garden, looking for fairies and we were talking (we’re always talking. it’s like we have a continuing conversation that started on MSN messenger some near five years ago and hasn’t even quite got to the point of the debate yet. We’re still talking about the weather, if one were to compare our continuing conversation to the millions of conversations that start across the globe every day).

I can’t quite remember who mentioned fireflies. It could’ve been C, it could’ve been the Shmoo, it could have been me. But, just as it was mentioned, he instantly quipped:

I wish I was a glow worm, a glow worm’s never glum. ‘Cos how can you be grumpy, when the sun shines out your bum!

I remember looking at him, startled. Somewhere, I think, you looked at the scene and cackled. That was the rhyme you would send me when I had a bad day at work, or I needed a cheer up. Once, you printed it out for me and stuck it on my desk when I was studying at home and feeling bleak about some heartbreak. You’d email it to me when I was crabby, and when I just wanted to be left alone. Somewhere, in the swathes of papers I have kept from my life, is that printout.

There is no way on the planet he could’ve known that, and yes, perhaps it was some funny coincidence. Things like that just happen. But, Dadadad, that was the day I knew I could lean. So I leant. I’ve been leaning for a long time now.

As time went on, and the Shmoo became a more permanent, rather than transitory, fixture of our every day life, so C began to rely on him. He became the third parent and, in that first year, he really got put through his paces. As we started living life as a trio, so life changed. So life threw family emergencies, loss and tears at us. But we were strong. So strong, that we could combat so much more. C began to lean on him too.

We live in a little townhouse now, together. Each morning, I wake the two of them up with their respective tea and coffee, and start the day. They then zoot off to school and work, and, every day, as I wave them goodbye, I grin.

They are a little club, you see. Where boring old mom is responsible for providing the snacks but… “really, mom, go do something else, we’re fine”. They go on adventures together. They laugh and talk and are silly together.

As time’s moved on, I’m not the only one C confides in. She feels safe to be herself, express her emotions and communicate her ideas with him. When they are skylarking around the house, and I hear her squeak with giggles, I think of “sweetiessssss!” and laugh to myself. When it’s the end of the day and she snuggles her head into his shoulder and we talk about our days, I think of sitting next to you on the couch.

And there, Dadadadad, I find you in our days. I found you as I leant, as C leant, and as we built this life together. I find you in my every day, and not just my DNA.

Thank you, for teaching me that rhyme. For every time you sent it to me, and for every time you stuck it in front of my face. Thank you, Dadadad, for it’s that rhyme that led me home.

Happy Father’s Day. I hope there’s whiskey and very loud music. But, most of all, I hope you see the glow-worm.

There’s alot I can say on this day. So much. June is always the month

where I miss my own father the most. Where I feel his void the

greatest, and when I, on the cusp of adding another year to my life,

want to turn to him and say “hey, am I doing okay?”.

So much to say. Instead of saying things, I thought I’d just be

thankful this year. I have been lucky enough, blessed enough, to have

had the most inspirational, stubborn father who believed in his family

more than anything, even when we pissed him off. heh. The gentlest, yet

firm when needed, paternal unit.

he used to say, that whenever we would fight, whenever he and my mum

would disagree, that the next morning, on rising, it wouldn’t

matter…that we’d still ‘smell like honey’ to him. That constant love

given, those 2am teas, the talks over the table.

When I was very little, I remember thinking my dad was very tall. very

strong. When I was a teenager, I remember thinking my dad was always in

my way. When I grew a little, I remember always knowing my dad was

always beside me, no matter what happened. The truth is, he’s always

been beside me – from walking next to the donkey at The Oaks, when he

wasn’t riding horses himself, to sitting next to me in the principal’s

office, to signing away his surety into my juvenile hands, to holding

my hand on the couch when I was in labour.

Always beside me.

Then I look at the father figures in my life.

My brother. Father to two, uncle to my daughter, always loving, always

working hard at everything. Always doing his best. Once, when I was

needed at work, and Cam was ill, he looked after her for me. Once, when

I was a teenager and in the middle of a dodgy situation I didn’t even

know I was in, he got me out. Once, when I was just verging on the

teens, I sprained my ankle. He carried me into the house, crying like a

baby. My brother, and yeah, we’re siblings, dudes, so of course we have

differences, I always feel, is the greatest tribute to our father any

of us could make. His constant love for his family, that drives him,

and holds us together, is unwavered by life. Proof of that lies in how

he loves his daughters, his wife and puts his heart into everything he

does. Yes, that includes rocking out, air-guitaring and laughing at my

shoes.

Always beside me. Always beside his family.

Cameron’s dad. My lifelong best friend, my confidante for every

formative day and deed of my life. I could write you three books on

him. But, he is Cameron’s father, first and foremost. How weird that

really is, I suppose, for me. From being the number one person in my

life, above all, to being the number one person for someone else. And

that someone else being the number one person in my life. A strange and

idiosyncratic circle. That said, his fatherhood, flung upon our lives

like a wayward balloon, is constant. Life is life, but his love for his

daughter exists even when he cannot see it himself. To see her eyes

light up for him, to listen to them talk in their own, special language

to each other, to watch them play, to the days when I used to watch

them sleep. How, four years on, when he picks her up and she nestles

her head into his shoulder, and the world is at peace. The look on his

face when she entered the world is the same look he has when he picks

her up for his weekends. Always constant love. In his own, particular way I
battle to understand.

Always beside Cameron.

My point? My point is simple. The father figures in my life, have loved

me, hated me, questioned me but always supported me. What makes a great

father? I don’t know, I’m not a father and I can’t judge. But, what I

do know, is that I am surrounded by brilliant, constant examples.

So, today, I say, Thank you.

Miss you Dadadadadad.