Judith Light… (c) 1995
“Dad was inadequate,” my brother said,
angrily, from hairy male head,
looking so much like the man he deplored,
yet anathema to the gentle father, I had once adored.
Images, like lantern show, flickering through my head,
prodded tearful flow, a heart’s letting go, at half truths being said.
Dad never cried…that could not be..
certainly not in front of me !!
Yet, at work, or play,
I saw him full of pain…every living day.
Sweat poured out in embarrassment and fear
every time emotion came, ever so dangerously, near.
He kept himself safe distance, never to be shown
in eyes, blue and clear, a person never to be known.
So often his voice would crack…
quickly cleared.. then back on track.
Often those eyes,
looked out, in question and surprise,
like a startled “how did I get here, and who are you out there ?”
And always leaving my question unanswered..”did he really care ?”
Were you there for us ?? not quite… always peripheral to our site,
but the toil of your hands… what you did..
was always life’s background for this kid.
Battered, freckled hands at that,
always ready with gentle pat,
reassuring in touch, I never have quite found
in other big male hands around.
Those hands caressed chess pieces with a masters expertise,
yet I knew they turned in secret to some glossy bedroom sleaze,
when not rubbing Mum’s weary feet and knobbly arthritic knees.
They painted and drew,
strummed musical chords and nurtured and grew
a jungle of colour and green.. a famous garden to be seen.
Plants were his friends, with no tongue to attack
his deeply felt unfitness..his painful lack
of all the badges of “Real Man”,
and his failure at the “do or die” plan.
Voices of wartime derision
of his agricultural decision
to push a farmer’s plough
not wear gold insignia on his red brow;
to walk through furrows of mud,
rather than rivers of blood,
called “Pommie” and “cur” as his name,
at the height of their zest,
despite volunteer badge on lapel of his vest,
sending dreaded white feather and soul destroying shame.
His brother gifted his childhood with a title he much preferred..
because of quite a big “beak”, they always called him “Bird”.
He sheltered it under an old straw hat.
but sun cancers thrived, in spite of that.
“My donkey’s breakfast,” or my “old lid”
he worn no matter what he did.
This was a man of song..
our family stereo, our three-in-one,
strumming ukelelle or old guitar;
sketching cartoons, telling tales;
of a hard life, and a “home” afar;
of elegant boarding school days
making fun of brutal of masters ways;
of the use of the rod and staff;
Initiations..what a laugh !!
What they had to do to “arrive” !!
those small boys battling to stay alive
in the England he never quite left..
(He went back there to die..
I guess that is the acid test. )
And my most painful regret ??
I never used a simple cassette
to record that glorious voice
of that once King’s College Choir boy
or to thank him
and tell him he brought me much joy.
And I never said the words aloud..
“I love you and you made me proud”.
How I wish my foolish brother could see
through his own male stuff,
what a wonderful man this used to be
not inadequate at all, but more than enough.
Judith Light 