Dad and the Walkman
Dad asked me yesterday
how the controls on his walkman radio worked.
My Dad!
Asking me that!
He knew everything when I was a kid. He
dominated everything.
His gusty gutsy spirit
was everywhere, and I had to fight bitter fights for my identity. How I hate to
see the fight gone out of him.
How I mourn the loss
of those conversations about old times we could have had. “What really happened
when Chief Engineer Lloyd lost his legs to a steel tow-hawse and died in your
arms? Tell me again about the crocodile you shot with a .22 rifle and why did
you sell the IMARA so soon?”
So many questions that
will never be answered even though he is here in the flesh. And when I look at
those once strong shoulders – hairy, sunburnt and smelling of sweat I am taken
back to when he carried me in a fireman’s lift home from the Kigoma beach
because my leg iron was not on.
Now he can hardly
walk.
What happened to his
dreams of keeping bees?
Of owning a pub?
Where are those many
friends Dad made, that used to come back to our house after a trip on the lake
steamer that he skippered?
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