Father’s Day is for the dead as well as the living, with the difference that dead men don’t need presents. They are a cheap option. All they cost is whatever lies swirling around in the bucket of your memory, your thoughts, your heart. You can’t fob them off with some stupid book about rugby or the more intelligent choice of a book that analyses the Polkinghorne phenomenon. You have to reckon with them. You have to come to some arrangement. You have to wonder what the hell that was all about. You could at least think about them today.
Father’s Day wasn’t a thing when I grew up, or maybe I just was too selfish to observe it. In any case, he left town when I was young. An ex once said to me I made a big fuss about how young I was when he left town but she looked into it – in many relationships, a partner becomes a subject that is investigated with forensic detail – and she revealed that I was a lot older than I made out. What it meant, she said, was that I must have known precisely what was going on instead of claiming that his departure was dream-like, hard to comprehend, a mysterious incident that belonged to the fog of childhood. I suppose I could think about that on September 7.
Father’s Day is a cute national ritual of love and respect and, as a father myself, I am all for it. I wish my father and my daughter had met. They would both have been dazzled by each other. He was one of those men who were pretty useless fathers but outstanding grandfathers, in a role that suited his idea of himself as a guest star, someone who made grand entrances and left with applause ringing in his ears. Anyway, he would so have loved her. He would have seen Austria in her blue eyes and fair hair, her little face like his face, Fraulein Minka. She would so have adored him. Maybe I will mention him in passing to her on September 7.
Father’s Day is a nice platonic valentine. I miss him, really. I remember crying when we said goodbye one time when he visited in Wellington because I thought it might be the last time I’d ever see him but he continued making farewell tours from his Canterbury home in his 80s and I remember thinking, “Oh god, not again.” Fathers are too much sometimes. Fathers are tiring. I am that kind of father. I will try to tread lightly on September 7.
Father’s Day is a chance to make a cup of tea for the silly old fool if they are alive and make peace if they are not. I wrote an essay for Landfall in 2006 about my father’s years as a prisoner of war – actually, the official term was enemy alien – on Somes Island during World War II. Auckland short story writer John Prins emailed me about it the other day. “I read it earlier this year, and it struck me as such a generous piece of writing. I totally loved it. The mix of historical archive and personal revelation really worked for me.” I felt really great about that and raced off to read it again myself, but it struck me as such a cold piece of writing. It was loveless. I’m sorry, Dad. It’s not the way I feel. I can see your little face and hear your heavily accented voice, Hans, and maybe something in me broke the day you left town, but I don’t hold it against you, not ever, not, of all days, on September 7.
