Three writers reflect on how their fathers influenced their lives

As we prepare to celebrate Father’s Day tomorrow, three writers reflect on their relationships with their dads and how these men influenced who they are today

Life wasn’t easy for a widower raising three young daughters

By the time my dad was 32, he’d done pretty well for himself. He was the head accountant for a large equipment hire company, he owned a threebedroom brick home in a leafy suburb close to the city and he had a happy and healthy little family. But at 33, his life changed irreversibly. In the early hours of a routine Friday night two days before Christmas, he suddenly became a widower, with three small daughters to take care of – the youngest only 17 months old. I was three when my mother died.

Growing up with Dad was fun. He was my world. In my life before school I spent many happy days hanging out with him, just the two of us, doing mundane tasks such as grocery shopping or fun things such as visiting my grandma’s house where my little sister lived for a while; all while my older sister was at school. Each night he would serenade me with his favourite songs. It’s possible I was the only pre-schooler in the country who knew the entire discography of The Seekers, PJ Proby, and Peter, Paul and Mary. Sometimes I would sleep in his bed and he would put on a cassette of nursery rhymes for me to listen to while he washed up or watched TV. I also cried a lot.

Occasionally now, when I travel from Hobart to visit Dad in Sydney, I pull out the family photo albums and look back at those times. For me they were the golden years, but I also recognise how hard it was for him. There’s a great polaroid of us kids in our driveway in front of our two-tone Sigma (known affectionately in the family as the coco-banana). We’re in our summer uniforms, hair cropped short, smiling and holding our school cases. My little sister is draped in a tangled string necklace of small plastic pearls and her pigtails are crooked, hastily done by a bachelor father whose forte wasn’t in little girls’ up-dos.

There were other signs, too, that he found it tough parenting alone. On the days our school tunics were in the wash we would turn up to primary school in yellow skivvies, brown corduroy pants and lace-up volleys. “Close enough, kids,” Dad would say.

And we never went on holidays because we survived on one part-time income. “I couldn’t afford it, Suzie-Q,” he would tell me years later. “But we did OK, didn’t we?”

In high school, my sisters and I were latch-key kids. Once home I would gorge myself on packet chips meant for the next day’s lunchboxes, a lunch that would invariably also contain a peanut butter and iceberg lettuce sandwich wrapped in wax paper. We were under strict instructions to limit ourselves to one packet of chips and an iceblock tube a day, but I never did. I would often cut the tops off an entire row of five plastic iceblock tubes, like some kind of frozen edible panpipe, then eat it while lounging in front of the TV. And I would always get in trouble afterwards.

Our after-school diet included anything we could microwave: microwave fish fingers, microwave party pies, microwave cheeseburgers, and at one stage, I firmly recall, microwave Chiko Rolls. My little sister, who is a superb cook, never took to soggy microwave food, and a few times dared to turn on the grill to crisp up the pastry on her No-Frills sausage rolls. We really would have been in trouble if Dad had found out about that.

Recently, we asked him if he would bake for us the delicious quiche lorraine we remember as kids. He seemed puzzled for a moment, then revealed that those, too, came from the freezer section of the supermarket. Incidentally, my little sister is now a firm vegetarian and my older sister is a health-food fanatic.

But we were lucky. Growing up we were very close to my paternal grandmother and our three unmarried uncles, Dad’s brothers. Until she passed away when I was in my teens, Grandma would whip up nutritious meals and regularly have us over for sleepovers. And she would do our hair. In a way, we grew up in a family with an older mum and four dads.

For Father’s Day each year, we still make cards for Uncle Bill, Uncle Bert and Uncle Ron. “Happy Uncle’s Day!” they cheerfully proclaim. They’re very much still a part of our lives. But it means, of course, that on Father’s Day, what should be a few short phone calls of a few minutes each, 20 minutes max, can take up the better part of the morning.

A fortnight ago, Dad had a health scare, which has made me reflect on our time together and on how important he continues to be to me and my children. “I’ve always said, Kid, I’d be happy if I made it to Grandad’s age. And I’m past that now,” he tells me.

This declaration frightens me. Though he lives more than 1500km away and I don’t see as much of him as I would like, I can’t imagine a world without him.