Just as Christmas can be lonely and isolating for many people, the supposedly official commemorations of parenthood – Father’s and Mother’s days – are equally difficult for others.
We all have a biological mum and a dad somewhere – although some of us, for all sorts of reasons, don’t know who one or the other or both are. But those of us who do will more than likely want to celebrate them in life or memory. And the official days (as commercially driven as they are) offer a collective opportunity to do that.
Yet on these days it’s unfair and naive to assume that everyone’s memories of their parents are filled with puppy dogs, magical birthday parties, beautiful holidays and (most importantly of all) emotional nurture.
People who have experienced childhoods with absent, abusive and otherwise negligent parents (regardless of class and culture) will tell you that having no present parents would have been preferable.
I’ll give those adults a thought on Sunday, Father’s Day, amid all of the online posting of happy snaps of people lucky enough to have lovely or pleasant or just present dads. I’m not judging. I post an old pic of me with Dad on my personal account for family and close friends most years. Our Dad, a sweet and gentle and popular man, died 17 years ago and we still miss him of course.
But this year I had other, imperfect, dads in my head.
Maybe it’s because floating around my bowerbird consciousness of late has been a magnificent short novel (The Spinning Heart by the Irish author Donal Ryan) that I’d read in preparation for an event at a writers’ festival that self-detonated when it unsuccessfully sought to silence Palestinian Australian novelist and activist Randa Abdel-Fattah.
The Spinning Heart is about life in an Irish village and many things besides. Not least fathers and sons.
It opens with two of the most compelling, harrowing sentences I can recall in a novel: “My father still lives back the road past the weir in the cottage I was reared in. I go there every day to see is he dead and every day he lets me down.”
This Father’s Day a thought track led me back to conversations I’ve shared with men who aren’t dads and women who are not mums (for multiple reasons), and how such special days of parental celebration can be tinged with a sense of melancholy or loss.
My kids might say, “Happy Father’s Day” if they are around. I might be given a punch in the shoulder or a beer (which I’ve bought!) from the fridge while I’m watching the footy. And that’s sweet. But on Father’s Day I also tend to recall the many other men and women who have been part of our kids’ lives – mentors who have helped guide them along their paths. Aunties and uncles the adult kids affectionately call them, although they are biologically unrelated, all of them part of the human web that has been woven into the safety net of their lives.
There’s something special about all of those aunts and uncles: a unique lens that perhaps, due to close biological proximity of mums and dads to progeny, brings a sharper emotional perspective and capacity for sage advice and … just more love.
As an adult I’ve been drawn to many older people (men and women) for wisdom and guidance, personal and professional. This began long before my parents died, and when they did, the continued warm embrace of such mentorship and guidance took on another world of importance.
Some of these people remain hugely important to me as I age.
My children will, I know, be similarly fortunate.
So, ahead of another Father’s Day, here’s to all of the men and women of emotional influence, caregivers, uncles and aunties, all of the mentors who may not be biological parents but who immutably shape and better our lives.
For they, too, are appreciated in a very special way.
