| Like everyone in Australia born in the first week of September, once every seven years my birthday coincides with Fathers' Day. I always loved it when I shared my "special day" with Dad. Now it is 2021, twenty-eight years since he died, and the two celebrations once again coincide. I've been thinking what an extraordinary birthday gift I received simply by being born to such a man. Fathers' Day 1993: I was moving house. It was my birthday. My Dad only had a couple of months left. Yet, there he was, at my new cottage, pruning the grape vines. And my Uncle Les was there, too. Driving trailer load after trailer load between Beckenham and Hilton, moving some furniture and an implausible number of plants. He worked all day. It wasn't till he went home in the late afternoon to be with his own family that I found out that not only had he spent Fathers' day with me,  |  it was also his own birthday. He was ill, too, with the asbestosis that killed my father. He died only six weeks after him. Many years ago I was in a psychotherapeutic group and we were asked to pair up at random and sit back to back with another group member. My partner happened to be a tall, solid man. Sitting back to back with him I became aware at a visceral level that the senior males in my life have always "had my back". In our toxic, patriarchal culture, this is a rare and fortunate thing. You can see in both these photos, the beauty of nurture, the gentleness with animals that was the measure of both my father and my uncle. |
Happy Fathers' Day, Dad. Happy Fathers' Day, Beloved Uncles. Happy Fathers' Day, to all the good fathers out there. Know that your work is immeasurably important.
My priceless birthday gift will last me through my entire life. I am profoundly grateful.
My priceless birthday gift will last me through my entire life. I am profoundly grateful.
Here is a prose poem about that cottage, that time, those men . . .
Idiom
My husband gutted our bathroom this week. I removed myself to the back garden while he removed the debris of decades. Later he showed me the shell. The dark wood of the weatherboards, the patched hole where the chip heater used to be, the inevitable white ant damage. I registered the stamped logo on one wall: Hardi Flex. That’s the new stuff isn’t it? I knew the other wall between house and lean-to was blue. ‘Stabilised,’ my husband cracked hardy. He was thirteen when he first handled sheets of asbestos. My brothers’ sleepout was lined with it, a weekend’s project by dad and my uncle. I live a couple of streets away from that uncle’s old house, a carbon copy of my own in this garden suburb where every wind bears filaments. He was an old school Aussie, the sort who’d say ‘Bewdy’ without irony and ‘Your blood’s worth bottling’ and his was. He was the first person I’d heard use the expression ‘cracking hardy’. He was advising me not to when I’d come home after a fall. I had no idea what he meant. But I learned. I watched for months while he held back rage and terror at my father’s deathbed. He never lost his bottle. Dad was Olympic class at the job himself. Their lungs were full of fibre, too. My dad died. My uncle died six weeks later. And I’d give a lot to crack hardy, myself.
Idiom
My husband gutted our bathroom this week. I removed myself to the back garden while he removed the debris of decades. Later he showed me the shell. The dark wood of the weatherboards, the patched hole where the chip heater used to be, the inevitable white ant damage. I registered the stamped logo on one wall: Hardi Flex. That’s the new stuff isn’t it? I knew the other wall between house and lean-to was blue. ‘Stabilised,’ my husband cracked hardy. He was thirteen when he first handled sheets of asbestos. My brothers’ sleepout was lined with it, a weekend’s project by dad and my uncle. I live a couple of streets away from that uncle’s old house, a carbon copy of my own in this garden suburb where every wind bears filaments. He was an old school Aussie, the sort who’d say ‘Bewdy’ without irony and ‘Your blood’s worth bottling’ and his was. He was the first person I’d heard use the expression ‘cracking hardy’. He was advising me not to when I’d come home after a fall. I had no idea what he meant. But I learned. I watched for months while he held back rage and terror at my father’s deathbed. He never lost his bottle. Dad was Olympic class at the job himself. Their lungs were full of fibre, too. My dad died. My uncle died six weeks later. And I’d give a lot to crack hardy, myself.
RSS Feed
