She is standing on the railing of the deck, cheeky. Funny creatures these.
Today is Fathers' Day, when westerners celebrate fathers. My father was an amazing chap. He loved his children with an enduring uncomplicated love. We were, each one of the three of us, the apple of his eye. (Apples were sacred in early Britain, and the pupil of the eye was called the apple, so saying that someone is the apple of your eye means that they are as precious as sight, and also precious and sacred to you.) Which is how he loved us.
He was also a cantankerous man, even when still quite young, and grew more curmudgeonly with age, but for us three he was always a rock, always, always willing to help, there with a shoulder to cry on, an ear to listen, a helping hand.
I remember how safe he was. I have never since felt so utterly safe as I felt with my father when I was a child. He was big and strong with huge hands, a fixer of machinery, a mover of heavy objects, a striding person in the world. And yet sensitive to nuances of emotion. He would surprise you with what he had observed when you thought you were hiding it so well.
I think he probably had attention deficit disorder (ADD), which of course wasn't even heard of when he attended a little village school in rural England, in the 1920's. He was a self-made man, struggling with learning disorders, and with my mother's quick brain to help him, he managed to haul himself up in the world and attained a comfortable middle and old age. Of course he was a flawed human being, as are we all, but for integrity and steadfastness you couldn't beat my dad. He died nearly three years ago, and I still miss that love and unfaltering loyalty, still miss his voice on the phone saying, "Oh hello, little Annepan," with such genuine happiness in his voice. Even though I was in my 50's, I was still his baby, his laatlammetjie.
Even though my father grew up in an extremely patriarchal society he raised his daughters the same as his son, pushing us to succeed, never giving us the slightest idea that we could not be anything we wanted to be. He also would probably have liked us to be more conventional women, but he was a good man and let us be our individual selves, even encouraged it, perhaps without always meaning to.
But there are so many bad fathers out there, that I struggle to understand why god is portrayed as a man, a father. The older I become the more I am shocked by how much evil in the world is perpetrated by men.
I like the Hindu idea of many different gods and goddesses, each with a unique personality and human foibles, each representing something of our complex human nature. Gods in our own image. Jealous gods, duplicitous gods, loving gods, mean gods, silly gods, good gods.
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