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The Things We Learn From Our Dads
And the things we don’t…
Does anyone really celebrate Father’s Day? The way we celebrate International Women’s Day or Mother’s Day? If your answer is yes, just know you’re the exception, and well done. I can tell you for a fact, my father was never celebrated. Not as a child. Not as a man. Not as a father. Even though he would have deserved it. As a child. As a man and as a father. He was far from perfect. If anything, he was one of the most flawed men I have met in my life, and now that I have lost him too, just five months after my mum, I find myself having to remember the things he taught me, and the things he didn’t. It turns out, they’re equally impactful.
“It takes a village to raise a child.” may very well originate from an African proverb, but it translates perfectly to my dad, who was raised by a literal village. His mum having left early and his dad working in another city, rendering him unable to be at home during the week, he became the kid that everyone kept an eye on. Not enough to care, but enough to make sure he’d grow into a teenager able to fend for himself. Suffice to say, he had no childhood to remember. Well, he did, but…
Stealing tomatoes from the neighbour, smoking cigarette butts at the age of 8, and fishing with a literal stick and…
