September 11, 2018
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Fathers Day
Fathers day in the great land of Oz was a couple of weeks ago. A day for families to get together in person or online and show the first male influence in their lives some extra special love and celebrate all of the other things they love about having a father or remembering a father who is no longer with them. For the most part, this is a good thing. It’s great to see so many of my friends sharing photos of their fathers on Facebook with short messages of love and appreciation towards them.
Unfortunately, that just makes me feel jealous because I didn’t have that relationship with my father. I lived in the same house as the man for the first 15 years of my life and to this day, I still have no idea who he really was. He was in reality two different people inhabiting the one body. There was the “everyman” that people outside my immediate family knew. Pleasant and conversational, helpful and friendly. You know, the kind of guy you’d invite into your house to meet your family and stay for tea. That’s the man I would have liked to have grown up knowing.
The man I did grow up knowing was an awful human being. A man who was a exceedingly harsh disciplinarian and I’m not talking about a hard slap across the bum with a bare hand, imagine being flogged with the buckle end of a belt or an electrical cable for a minor infraction. A man who drank to excess and angered easily. A man who would give my mother $80 - $100 a fortnight and expect her to feed and clothe 4 children. A man whose final response to an issue was to use his fists - the sight of your father rolling around on the front lawn with the neighbour over a minor dispute about emptying the backyard pool was just embarrassing. Watching him beat my mother in the bathroom because she pointed out that the toilet was leaking was the last straw - that was the night my father died to me.My mother left my father twice - the first time was soon after the aforementioned beating in the bathroom. That lasted about a month because he convinced her that he could/would change. He would go to AA and get help. HAHAHAHAHA!
My mother finally realised that he was never going to change and we would be better off without him in 1981. He had visitation rights and would come home every weekend to spend “quality time” with us kids but then he would complain that we were never around for him to spend time with us. Of course we weren’t - my older brother and I were teenagers and had lives to live and my younger brother just didn’t like him that much either. I really didn’t have much to do with him throughout the ‘80’s.
Our paths did converge when I joined the railways in 1988. As he worked as a brake examiner at Clyde railway yards and I was a trainee engineman, it was inevitable that we would come across each other. He would proudly introduce me to his workmates as being his son and act as though we were friends. On these occasions, I would try and talk to him but we had nothing in common and I left the freight services soon after and we never really spoke again until he was near his death and asked to see us boys. I did go to the hospital to see him but there was nothing there - no compassion from for his predicament, no apologies from him over the way he treated us. He died a short time later. My younger brother and I never went to the funeral.
When I think about it now, I realise that the old adage that says “the ability to have children, doesn’t mean you should” rings true here. My father was never the parental type. He didn’t know how to be a father and he wasn’t prepared to learn. He could certainly act like one but being a father is a lot more than just going through the motions. It’s teaching kids the lessons in life that they need to be able to deal with every day life. It’s helping out with homework or going to parent/teacher nights. Even the simple things like teaching you how to tie your shoelaces - my father never even taught me that. I was about to go to high school and my uncle had to teach me how to do it.
So you will have to excuse me for not enjoying fathers day. I had a shitty father who was never worth the praise and thanks that other peoples fathers deserve.
So a Happy Fathers day to all the good fathers out there.
