Fathers

If you live in Australia, then you will have known that yesterday, 1st September, was father’s day. In the past, to me, it was just another day. I never got on all too well with my father. I used to think he was annoying and pretty damn stupid. Let me tell you how that started to change.

Last year, the company my dad worked for changed hands and the new owners decided to get new staff. He wasn’t kept on. He got a redundancy package, sure, but that wasn’t enough to sustain us. I didn’t work and neither did my mother. Luckily, a competing company stepped up and put on all staff they could, including my father. We were of course incredibly grateful, but that meant a family of four were living on my father’s twenty-five hours a week wage, my brother’s weekly board (which didn’t count for much considering he ate like a freaking horse) and both me and my mother both on government support.

We were never a rich family but we suddenly had literally no money for the extras. Most of the redundancy package went to fixing the car, buying a new washing machine when ours broke suddenly and just general things we needed. Times were hard. My brother, who’d only just gotten engaged, was saving up to move into a place of his own so he couldn’t help out much.

Times were hard. Instead of being the only one at home, it was either my mum or my dad at home with me at some stage. Sometimes both of them – his hours were only casual and mum…well, she didn’t have a job. She did have a social life, though, unlike me.

That wasn’t where things started to change, that’s just a bit of background. Mid last year I started a course which ran for six months. I was out of the house three days a week, which I found to be brilliant. And then it ended, as all things tend to do. I was supposed to go back this year…but the government rejected the funding thing, and I didn’t have the money myself, so I was left with having no plans for this year.

It wasn’t until recently that things started to change. By some stroke of luck, my mum got a job. Around the same time my dad’s hours of work changed, and he working mostly in the afternoon. I’d wake up each morning to find mum gone and dad pottering around doing…something. Our house isn’t huge so it’s not like I could hide from him. Day by day, he started to become less annoying and a little funnier. We ended up getting into a sort of routine – we’d watch the televised re-runs of Friends before lunch, and then he would get ready to go to work. On Thursdays he’d go get the paper and, if I gave him money, he’d bring back a bottle of Coke and a Snickers bar.

I didn’t realise how enjoyable everything started to be until this past Saturday. We were at the grandparents’ house and, as usual, they were as boring as everything. They ask the same questions over and over. So my father and I started to act like complete and utter idiots together and we had fun.

Sometime during this fun, I had a sudden thought. A friend of mine lost her father around this time last year, and it all of a sudden hit me: what would life be like without my father? The good and the bad…I would put up with it all over again.

I guess the point of this is to honour your parents, and to actually spend time with them. You don’t know when that time will run out. My friend didn’t know. 

So, if you’re living with your parents…go and hug your dad. If you’re not, give him a call. And if, like my friend, your father has passed, then remember them - the good times and the bad.