Someone reminded me.
Maybe only a few people will read this,
but if I've written it, I'll remember it better.
The scene is a very suburban verandah
of the 1960s. In those days, there were still eaves on red-brick
project homes, they were mostly single-storey, and they always
included a covered verandah of at least a few square metres.
The night I'm thinking of must have
been in the summer school holidays, because as a (roughly)
nine-year-old I rarely even got to stay awake late enough to see the
TV test pattern! And this night, when the TV ended for the night, the
whole family retired not to bed, but to the verandah.
And I was maybe nine years old. As the
change-of-life child of the family, that meant my siblings were
already 16, 18 and 20: old enough for long adult conversations while
I tried to butt in (I guess) and doze while trying to stay awake.
No, the numbers don't work. I must have
been eight, because by the time I was nine, the eldest had left home
for university.
Was being awake this late exciting? You
bet.
And it was summer, which in Sydney
means it doesn't cool down early in the night. So I lazed around with
the rest, and don't remember any details, but I do remember
the meteor shower dad kept us all awake for.
There
was a mattress or maybe an inflatable that I was lying on. There was
adult talk all around. The night was muggy and dark. Even the
suburbs, in those days, still had stars.
And
the stars started moving, flashing across the sky. And every time he
spotted one, dad would laugh and call and point.
And I
remember, because that was one of the very few times I knew him to be
happy.
I
remember how deliriously happy he was when, in a rented Halvorsen
cruiser, we ran into a wild storm trying to get to Pittwater. He was
a seaman in World War Two: the waves crossing the mouth of the
Hawkesbury were taller than our boat; mum and my siblings and me were
cowering (I was put near dad for my own safety).
He was
laughing like the Old Man of the Sea, swinging the boat towards every
towering wave, turning it after the wave passed, yelling “turn you
bastard!”, inching towards Pittwater, alive and mad and loving it.
Once,
he bought me a gift I didn't expect, a whole new drum kit when I
thought I was getting him to buy me a new pedal. My reaction made him
happy, I think.
He
wasn't happy that often. To my 50th
year, my mother's explanation didn't go far beyond her standard
explanation, that “the war changed him”.
I
guess he may have been happy in the affair that, sometime when I was
a kid, caused misery everywhere else. Or perhaps it may have only
been a small relief of his own misery and madness. Mum once said she
forgave him partly because of the war: because she had loved someone
who took ship and never came home, but she understood.
He was
over-the-moon when a vet said our Labrador, Denny, could be saved
after he'd been hit by a car. It cost $1,800 – a considerable price
in 1974 – but Denny repaid him by caring for dad when Alzheimer's
degraded his brain. The dog would take him out each day, and always
return him home.
…
There
was one more time. The year was 1977, I think. I don't remember the
reason for the trip, but it took us through the lower New England,
and dad wanted to seek out a friend from the 1950s, when he was
surveying roads around Barrington Tops.
His
memory was perfect, then. He found Tom Meehan's place through
unmarked dirt roads without trouble. It was a classic
post-and-corrugated-iron shack, abandoned, but because it had no
locks, we walked through it before we continued the search.
A road
crew stopped us, and dad asked if they knew Tom, and they did, and
pointed us to the right road. We drove for a while on the dirt, and
an old man leaned against a rail-type fence.
Dad
stopped the car, got out and yelled.
“I'd
know your beret anywhere on earth! Damn you, Tom! I thought you were
dead!”
“No,
just had to move closer to town. How are you, Stan? This one of your
sons?”
He was
happy that evening, as well.
…
There's
a photo of me, eleven or twelve years old, perched on a fallen tree,
on the path that leads to The Ruined Castle in the Blue Mountains.
You
weren't happy that day; perhaps you were worried about work, or quite
possibly you resented being detailed to drag me out on a proper
bushwalk.
But I
was happy, and I've taken Ms T and the boys on the same walk, twice,
and we love it. And I don't say so, but I think of you when I'm on
that path.
Because
I was happy, that day. So much so that I keep you in my mind whenever
I tread that path.
…
And
here I am, transported to the late 1960s by a friend's casual remark
and wondering why.
I
can't wish my father alive again. He wasn't particularly lovable. As
mum said, the war changed him. What sanity the navy left him with, he
saved to make sure he could provide for his family. It didn't leave
much sanity for the home front. He was volatile, fey, dangerous.
I'm
volatile and fey, but I've worked hard, and I'm a lot less dangerous.
My
sons will at least remember happiness, because they've seen plenty. I
may nag and carp and demand they do better, but I also laugh and
love. Maybe without realising it, I've set myself the task of healing
the wounds of my father's war, so my sons can somehow manage to be
more sane than was given to he or I.
And I
want them to know that a happy father isn't so unusual.
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