THE GIFT ITSELF

I wish I could calculate how long I spend choosing cards for people. It always feels like ages, and, as I said the other day, I find it very difficult.

It’s Father’s Day here in the UK today, so I did my best to find that perfect card to sum up my relationship with my Dad, there in the crowded aisle in the middle of Sainsbury’s.

There was barely anything suitable. Had I been more organised, sure, I’d probably have cracked it weeks ago, but great planning hasn’t ever really been a strong-point. And so there I was, scanning the rows of cards.

And what cards they were! I’ve realised that we can tell a lot about society from the cards we buy. What I learned today is that on the whole, dads like beer, cars, and football. To a man, they’re terrible cooks and they tell awful jokes, they all pride themselves on being the ‘best’ dad, and they’re lazy. That’s what was on the cards it seems for the dads of the world.

But my Dad isn’t any of those things. He doesn’t like football, beer makes him screw up his face as though it were paint-stripper, and his only interest in cars is the perfunctory job they do of ferrying him from A to B, which, if you think about it, is exactly what they’ve always been for.

It is true that he can’t cook, but the stereotypical image of him pulling out a trayful of ashes from a smoking oven never once happened. He was wise enough to keep it simple when it mattered, even if he grew up in an age when the gender roles were clearly defined for him. In any case, I know loads of other dads now (mostly my age actually) who are amazing in the kitchen, and love a social media post about it every now and again. You’re out-of-date big-time there, Sainsbury’s!

The jokes are bad, yes, and sometimes they wander just the wrong side of being politically correct, but for as long as I can remember, he’s made us laugh by making himself laugh at them. And if your audience and you are in fits of laughter, I reckon the ‘quality’ of the material might be irrelevant, don’t you?

He doesn’t pride himself on being the ‘best’ dad. Yet somehow, through the most trying of times over the years, he’s raised four incredible children who are responsible, wise, funny, and classy. And he’s done that without ever blowing his trumpet about it. He is the best.

And finally, he’s far from lazy. He worked incredibly hard at everything he did, and he took pride in it, cycling 15 miles to work every day for thirty years, transforming people’s gardens, looking after church people, peering down microscopes and analysing the results. And he still does give his all in everything he does, even in retirement.

I found a card with a painted picture of a man in Wellington boots taking a nap in a garden shed. It seemed right. I wrote something nice in it and took it round.

He was thrilled. But of course, these things are only bits of paper; the real joy, the gift itself, is always in the legacy. And one of the best things about being a son and a father, I suppose, is that you get to open that gift together.