Yesterday would have been my dad's 90th birthday.
However we tried, we never agreed with each other.
He always hoped that I would turn out like him,
but the times conspired to produce different results.
Circumstance changed what went on around it.
He never understood nature/nurture arguments.
He liked his work, being drunk with his mates,
and the false sense of rest he had with his hangover,
sprawled in front of the television playing 'sport',
in the house that he believed that he alone owned,
where for years family had to deny to themselves,
and each other, how often they tiptoed around him.
He never understood how
'hangovers and children do not mix'.
He is not here to celebrate this date,
he checked out aged 74
after too many hangovers,
I checked out of his life
just a few short years before that.
His legacy to me was that
when I hear new speeches
by larger-than-life-liar-politicians
I spot sooner the type they are
by how much their speeches
reminds me of him.
I turn their speeches off
and seek a media 'breathes' more,
that is, a media that is not a vacuum.
Happy Honi Soit* dad, you have earned it.
*Latin for 'evil be'
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