Dad’s Day and Dancing to my Ten Guitars

It’s Father’s Day. This time last year I was chatting to my Dad by phone because he lived in Waipukurau in Central Hawkes Bay on New Zealand’s North Island and I lived in Sydney, Australia.

We talked about the drought there in outback Australia, the equine flu, the New Zealand economy and the effect of global outsourcing on its local economy, and what music he’s listening to these days. It’s what you do on Father’s Day when one of you is there and the other of you is here. You talk about stuff you’d always talk about as if you were just popping in for afternoon tea. Works for us.

I’ve often thought that we do this crazy thing of saving up all the good bits of news and waiting to tell it to our loved ones when we see them next. But what if we don’t? See them next I mean. What if all that saving up amounts to nothing except regret? Regret that we didn’t say it when we could, you know, in the here and now.

My neice Kylie taught me this great lesson. We were eating jelly-babies one year or other, I forget when exactly. Anyway, I was saving all the blackberry jelly-babies to eat last because when you save them like that, you somehow feel that they’ll taste better or sweeter or somehow last longer.

So! Having saved up all these lovely blackberry jelly-babies, I was mortified that she reached over, took two at a time and popped them into her mouth and with youthful pernickety glee exclaimed … “mmmmmmmm, my favourites!!!!!” And mine too I thought as I watched her demolish them. I was gobsmacked. So here’s the thing, watch out for cheeky jelly-baby eating neices and waiting too long to talk to the people that you love.

I’d like to think that no matter how odd people listening might think about the subject matter of the conversations they might have overheard between my Dad and me, they’re never actually odd to the two of us. Infact, they’re as natural as drinking tea together which is probably what we’d have been doing if I was there. Drinking tea and talking about what’s going on in the world.

Father’s Day is just another excuse I give myself to have these “odd” chats with someone I love alot. And that excuse is about as simple as breathing. Happy Father’s Day Dad. This year I get to have tea with him in person and maybe I’ll just turn on Englebert and listen to him sing ten guitars just because I can.