I loved my Dads. Both of them. Birth-dad. Step-dad. Though they never met in this life, the pair no doubt busy slaying those in the next with classic Dad jokes, after all, that’s what Dads do and today as we celebrate Father’s Day, my chance to honour them.
Never experienced the love of my birth-dad first hand for Mum, at the tender age of 20, bid him farewell, packed a few books, two-year-old me and headed west. Governess, Jillaroo, Pub Chef, Telephonist, not a thing that woman couldn’t put her mind to, including an impressive ability to stay ‘mum’ about my father. Evan. The Journalist. The man whose lust for her very impressive breasts had led to my conception. So why do I love him? Well, he gave me the opportunity to meet my Mum.
Evan also gave me the pleasure of three half-siblings. When meeting them for the first time in my mid-30s – the same laugh, same humour, same mannerisms, love of writing, of MC Escher’s work – a beautiful, genetically engineered puzzle piece fell into place. An intense, intrinsic connection – I’d found my ‘kin’. And doubled my sibling count.
While Evan was generating said siblings, Mum was hanging up her nomadic boots and succumbing to a man who, in adoration and with a tad of recklessness, whisked her and her daughter away to an outback sheep station. A place of dusty plains, Gidgee trees, red gibber rocks, flies, swelter and spectacular sunsets. Ian. The Mechanic. Should have been a cowboy I know but Mum found them notoriously unreliable.
Ian taught me how to ride a bicycle, shoot a gun, skin a ‘roo; the secrets to finding my way back to the homestead should I ever lose myself on the vast acres, how to put a whole duck
egg yolk in my mouth without it oozing down my chin. He also tenderly brushed my hair before bed, vetoed my first boyfriends and continued to love my mother as evidenced by my other three siblings whom I absolutely adore. Nappy changes, bathing, feeding, reading to them, watching them grow into the grounded, loving, beautiful adults they are today, how could I not.
Seems I’m one of the lucky ones. Two dads, six siblings, a magnificent Mum who continues to inspire (their’s too). The people who shaped the person I am today – a city girl, a country gal. A woman with a love of writing, an insatiable wanderlust and the uncanny ability to always find her way back home…and into their arms.
Here’s to the Dad’s today – Happy Father’s Day, wherever you are.
