There was one time when he struck up a conversation with a bird at the supermarket that remains in my mind as my greatest embarrassing moment. I don't mean a woman, I mean a bird. One of those birds in the cage where you put money in and an egg with a toy in it drops out. One of those birds that whistles at you as you walk past and says "ello". My Dad said "Hello" back. It was a bargain supermarket called Dollarwise which ran the bulk promotions that Dad couldn't pass on. We could have called in for something to cook for dinner and we'd leave with 18 cakes of soap and 10 frozen chickens but little else. Once he went in without his shirt on and a girl from school served us. He always used to arrive with music booming and park straight outside the door with all his windows down. He never really gave a care for what people thought but he always seemed to gain attention. He walks with a limp, tends to whistle as he walks, has always been just as likely to tell someone to get fucked as he is to ask them how their day is going. I've never been one to like people looking at me. But I went out with him often. On this occasion I'd wished I hadn't.
He didn't stop at "Hello", he was far too taken with the talking bird. The bird said "What's your name?". I wanted to die when my Dad said "Billy". He could have said "Bill" or even "William" but he didn't. He said "My name is Billy, what's yours?" I don't remember what the bird said, it could have asked him if he was having a nice day. He could have said his name was Polly. All I could hear was my Dad calling out "look darling, this bird can talk". "No it can't" I muttered under my breath. "It can, it can" he called out, loudly, "look, it's a talking bird". "It's not a real bird Dad" I said, wishing people weren't looking. "Yeah, it is, it's a talking bird, isn't it beautiful?" He may as well have had a megaphone. Everyone was staring. Customers, ALL the check-out chicks, I think even the food and trolleys were staring at him. And at me. "Dad" I said in my most teenaged "are you fucking kidding me" undertone, "Dad, it's not a real bird, it's a pretend bird, a plastic bird". He looked at me like I was the idiot. "No it is..." and then it dawned on him. He'd been talking to a plastic bird. In front of people. People who were staring. "Ha" he said, having the good grace to be at least partially as embarrassed as I was "I thought that bird was real" he announced to everyone "but it's not". People were too dumbfounded to speak, they laughed nervously as Billy and I made a quick getaway with our trolley full of frozen chickens.
I still remember that burning feeling or embarrassment. But I laugh. And I laugh about the time he came home wet, whereas he still gets embarrassed. I've mentioned he liked to drive with his windows down. He also had a sunroof he liked to have open. One day he went to the car wash. I suspect you think you know what happened? Think again. Apparently, so my dripping wet father said, the car wash makes him feel sea sick. Apparently he used to like to get out of the car before the washing cycle started and get back in at the end. I am very glad I wasn't there on this day. The day he had exited his car before the wash cycle started and then noticed he'd left his sunroof down. Apparently he made a mad dash to get back in the car to shut it when whoosh, the water started.
So the story goes, at the very moment my Dad found himself getting sprayed with water, outside his car, in the car wash, some people walked past. They weren't the sort of people not to point and stare, apparently they laughed their heads off, pointing at the idiot in the car wash. My dad was humiliated. He was also very, very wet. The people moved on, Dad got himself in the clear and the car got a good clean, on the inside and out. It was when the dryers on the car wash started that my very wet dad had a brilliant idea, he was dripping wet, the giant blowers were on, he would stand in front of them and get dry. Simple. He had this funny notion that he'd be able to carry on with his day and no one would be any the wiser. It's just that the people who had seen him caught in the car wash, the ones that had laughed and pointed and gone on their way obviously got a minute up the street and thought to themselves "I wonder what that idiot is doing now". The people came back to find that the man, who seemingly thought he was a car, was standing in the car wash still, getting dried. And they couldn't have found that more hilarious!
There are a million other stories I could tell about my Dad and often I do. He only has one leg, having been run over by a train when he was twenty. His ginger hair has been falling out for as long as I can remember and he's always been notoriously colourful. There was the time he was walking across the road from the pub when a policeman stopped him and asked for his keys. "What are you talking about?" my Dad asked. "Come on mate" said the cop "I've just seen you walk over the road and you're all over the show". "I've only got one leg you cunt" my Dad replied. "Oh come off it" the cop said. Some other people's fathers may have found another way to prove it. My Dad dropped his trousers. The policeman was nearly speechless and highly embarrassed. "I'm sorry mate" he said "I'll leave you to it". "So you fucking should" replied my Dad. And he got in his car and headed for home. Drunk.
It wasn't the only time he dropped his trousers. There was a meter maid who challenged his right to park in a wheel chair park. Speechless. It wasn't the only time he used colourful language. We grew up being allowed to say the words "bloody" and "shit" because he always said they weren't swearing. I learnt most of my swear words from him. There was the time when I was 9 and he was deconstructing the garage when he dropped the central beam on his big toe, his only big toe. I learnt a lot of words that day. And there was the day when I was twelve that I tried to ring home from the movies to get a lift home. There were new payphones that I didn't know how to use. You needed to push the "hash" key when the person answered but I didn't know that. I tried about three or four times and kept getting my younger sister. I could hear her but she couldn't hear me. I tried again. This time my Dad answered. He still couldn't hear me but his sentence started with "Now listen hear you..." and finished with a diatribe of words which I would still never dare to repeat. I went outside the phone box and found someone to show me how to use the phone. When he answered the next time I was able to squeak "um, Dad, that was me". He still gets quite embarrassed.
He is a Dad that has always been bigger than life. He is the funniest person I have ever met in my life. No one has ever made me laugh so much. He is the most gentle and sensitive man in the world and he is also rather volatile. He has always been difficult, strict and angry. He is a million different people rolled in one. He has always been my hero and always someone I have feared. He has always fiercely defended his children, always entertained us, always been involved in our lives, always dominated us. He has always been very complicated. I always adored him. For my mother he has been not the easiest husband but she loves him too. I haven't mentioned the million things he has done that make her a saint.
My Dad has severed the arteries in his arm as a child, been hit by a train as a young adult, lost a leg. He has had three heart attacks. Twenty one months ago, after his third heart attack, he had a major stroke. He now has epilepsy and struggles to balance his medication between being too sedated and dizzy or having grand mal fits. His neurologist thinks he has frequent petit mal seizures. He has had to learn to talk again, it is still extremely difficult for him. Initially he learnt to speak in numbers, his grandchildren were "3", "5" and "7", being their ages at the time. "1","2" and "3" were the heart attacks, "4" was the stroke. "1" and "2" were the nurses and doctors. "2" also meant headache. He then moved through the alphabet, needing a letter and sound to start a word before he could say it. Now he can talk pretty well, although he stutters and is slow.
The brain is an amazing thing as it tries to heal itself. While Dad has learnt to speak, mostly, sort of, he can read but he cannot spell. He cannot write. And he has lost his aliteral comprehension - colloquialisms confuse him as he now takes everything by it's literal meaning. Like we're speaking a foreign language. If you speak too fast he can't follow and he can't follow two people speaking at once. If two people are having a conversation next to him he has no idea what is being said. He gets angry and frustrated and upset.
Sometimes the hardest thing is the overwhelming grief in having someone who looks like my old Dad, and thinks he is my old Dad, just not being him any more. I want to scream at him that I don't want him, I want my Dad back. I want the Dad that I could talk to, the Dad who made me laugh, the Dad who understood me, back. And sometimes I want this stranger to not be here anymore. It is hard to reconcile the new, just as angry, just as volatile, just as difficult but far more vulnerable man with the man who was my Dad. He doesn't make me laugh anymore and I can't tell you how much I miss him. But he is still here. He's 63. Maybe he'll keep getting better or maybe he'll have another great big heart attack, we all wait in fear of him not being here anymore. Every time the phone rings my heart leaps. It's also so hard to comprehend that someone so much larger than life has found himself so small. And it's hard to remember that this man who we miss so much is a man who needs us more now. Even though he is so freaking difficult.
My Dad, I think, is the toughest man in the world. And I love him and I am incredibly proud of him. But I miss the man who thought that the plastic bird was real and the only man in the world who could get caught in a car wash. I miss him like crazy, even though there is a new man, who needs me, in his place.
love you xxxxx
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