Dads don’t usually get a lot of praise. Even the lead up to Father’s Day is a lot less hyped than Mother’s Day. People often complain about deadbeat and absent fathers and ignore those who stick around. I am lucky to have grown up with my dad very much involved in my life.
When my younger brother, Nicholas, and I were still in primary school, dad would wake us up and drop us to school, as mum left earlier to go into Port-of-Spain with my older brothers. The mornings would usually start with dad over the sink scraping off the burnt part of toast or stirring some lumpy milo for us for breakfast. His granddaughters are huge fans of his lumpy milo, Nic and I weren’t. He also had the skill of being able to burn one side of toast, while the other side remained soft and soggy with unmelted butter.
While we ate, he would read Wind and the Willows or Aesop’s fairy tales to us while highlighting all the words we didn’t know. We were supposed to look them up after breakfast, but we rarely ever did because he would always glance at the clock at some point while reading and exclaim “caramba!” and rush us off to shower and get ready. Inevitably we reached to school late a lot, but I think those mornings at the breakfast table were more educational than anything being taught in the 10 or 15 minutes that we missed at school.
My brothers and I have a lot of funny stories about dad. Like the time he made Nicholas run through POS to get to his CXC exam on time, or how he would always get more nervous than us on the mornings we had any exam to take, his loud singing with the windows down on the way to school as we cringed in traffic, his slow driving, his insisting that I dance “skip to the loo” with him at my wedding because I used to make him hold my hand and skip singing that song as a child, his “daddy is very proud of you” comments after church when we all managed to actually sit still for Mass, his pretending to be shocked at the bill when we went to Pizza Hut for birthdays and opening his eyes and mouth huge to make us laugh, much to mum’s embarrassment. Yes, my childhood is filled with happy memories of dad, or Dadad as he now refers to himself since it’s what his granddaughters call him.
Happy Father’s Day dad. Thank you for everything you did and continue to do for us every day. I love you.
