Father’s Day Recollections
My father comes back to me now
in his prime, not as the old man
frail and forgetful – though even then
he found ways to be cheerful. No,
I see him as the wise counsellor
and personal friend; before
the flaws became visible
and filled my gaze … ah well,
it was a brief time. But good.
I could go further back
to the fun young Dad,
the one who rolled on the floor
as we tickled him, the one
who hugged us, laughed, taught us
our letters on alphabet blocks,
made us toy bows and arrows
from his own home-grown bamboo.
(All his life, he loved to garden.)
Or I could focus on
his walking-stick, his limp,
the suppressed winces of pain.
There were bad days and good.
I never asked what made
the difference. (Was it
the weather?) All that
was just part of the background
of life, of what made him him.
I try not to think (but I must)
of the weakness, the betrayal.
I call it out now:
self-indulgence, cowardice.
The serial infidelities that at last
lost him my mother’s love; the failure
to guard his children from the cruel
mad stepmother he gave us
in a face-saving, hasty remarriage.
Poor Dad! But was he? After
she mentally castrated him (ironic
fate) he taught himself to paint
landscapes in oils, and sold them.
(Some he gave away to my brother and me,
after we were grown, living our own lives.)
And he wandered the Mallee, finding thick,
knobbed, curling sticks which he sanded
and polished as walking-sticks. Sold them too.
All this, and more, made up the man.
There was also the boy I heard about
from his sister my aunt, and my grandma
his mother. Crippled young by an accident,
but cheerful, making the best. A dreamer,
a reader. A lover of poetry, who wrote it too.
The man recited poems (other people’s)
at parties, where the leg didn’t stop him
being a smooth ballroom dancer….
But he comes back first
in his prime; the one I could talk to,
the kindred spirit, the companion
sharing favourite books, the knowing advisor
enlightening his teenage daughter
on the male point of view, the grown-up
expanding my understanding
of history, sociology, psychology,
nature. And of course literature.
He was in his way, I suppose,
a good-looking man – open countenance,
fair skin; pleasant, even features
(apart from the family nose with its bump)
and well set-up, as they used to say.
What he couldn’t get from sport (because
of the leg) he could from gardening.
So he never got fat. Just squarer.
His usual expression was kindly.
He gave me my own poetry,
reading and writing. He gave me
my politics, and my belief
that intolerance is the thing
I should most be intolerant of.
(Perhaps he also gave me
a liking for liquor, and a sad lack
of Puritan morals!) I loved him again
and he knew it, shortly before he died.
I don't have any photos of him at the time I most like to recall, so instead I show him as a young man in father role, and as the elderly artist (resting his hand on one of the wooden walking-sticks he crafted).
And yes, today is Father's Day in Australia.
I'm sharing this post in Writers' Pantry #86 at Poets and Storytellers United.
