Cape Town - Sunday is Father’s Day.
I don’t generally do Days. There’s something about calendars and half-price schnitzels and cards emblazoned with puppies that makes me recoil. I saw a Father’s Day display in a shop and, judging from the goods on offer, it would seem that dads enjoy gadgets, pens, the colour brown, biltong, underpants, plaid, exercising and pipe-smoking.
Mother’s Day usually involves foot spas, chocolate, flowers and pyjamas. It’s as though Don Draper and his Mad Men crew have put together the advertising campaigns, because we all know that mothers are delicate creatures who cook and clean and have sore feet, and fathers are really clever and strong and sign important documents and swing golf clubs on weekends.
My father hates golf. He looks like a mudslide in brown, says biltong is suppressed steak and would rather be seen in florals than plaid. Well, not really, but it’s an amusing image.
Last week, I attended a memorial service for a man I had known. His four sons stood up and tearfully paid tribute to a father who had and hadn’t been there throughout their lives. In December, I watched my husband weep at his father’s death bed – tears of loss and grief, of anger and remorse at the distance between them. A phone call, an embrace, a few small words suddenly seem so simple.
I feel so lucky. Yes, there was that period when my dad was working a lot to build his company. We would catch glimpses of him at breakfast and at night, before bed, when he would sit alone and eat warmed-up mash. But on weekends he was there in all his curly hair, teaching us to ride bicycles and reading us Roald Dahl.
When I hit those hormonal teenage years, with their acne, angst and Alphaville obsession, I turned not to my mother but to my father. We shared the same love of Monty Python, he wrote poetry about false teeth and he let me take our flatulent bullmastiff to bed.
He understood my need for books and Berlin pop bands and crises that involved more than whether Steven Heath would ever find me attractive. He supported my dream of going to live in the jungles of Borneo, where I would survive on grubs and possibly marry an ape.
He never tried to tell me that DH Lawrence was a wally. He said my purple Mohawk was interesting. And when I crawled into my cupboard to cry about starving babies, Steven Heath, having to play a man in the school play, or girls who had called me weird, my dad would crawl into the cupboard with me, close the door, and we would sit in the dark on squeaking shoes and talk about the world.
Over the years, our bond has only strengthened. And as I’ve got older, my view of him has shifted. He is not merely an engaged, warm and solid father, but a human being with faults and yearnings, regrets and failings. I have held him tight while he sobbed. I have taken him to forests when I sensed his need for solitude. I have held his hand crossing rivers, his older knees less reliable than they used to be.
My parents have lost two sons. “It’s not supposed to be like this,” my father says, “you’re not supposed to outlive your kids.” But it has happened. It is like this. And we carry on.
Right now, my father, sister and mother are homeless – not in a beardy, digging-in-dustbins way, but in a brave and driven way. Having packed up and moved to Scotland after my first brother died, in a bid to start afresh, they have sold their house, packed up again and are moving back to South Africa. “I want to watch my grandkids grow up,” says my dad. “I want to be near my family.”
My parents are in their 70s. My dad’s eyes have grown milky. Time has cycled around them, grief has sucked them up and spat them out, and now they are returning home.
When they eventually find a house, I hope it has large cupboards. My legs are much longer than they were at 14 and my butt has expanded. I’d like to sit in the dark with my dad and talk about the world. I’d like to tell him that marrying an ape would never have worked out. I’d like him to say that DH Lawrence was a wally and that the purple Mohawk made me look like a thistle.
I’d like to tell him I’m glad he’s not golf and plaid and biltong and brown. That I still haven’t got everything worked out. That I wonder what the lead singer from Alphaville looks like now. And ask him if he would recite his poem about false teeth. And then take a walk with me in the sun.
Cape Argus