Dad

Today I’ve decided to tell you about my dad.

My dad and I have a weird relationship. We get on really well, but we don’t. We enjoy a lot of the same things, but we’re very different. We are exceptionally similar, and yet we’re not.

When I think of my dad, I think of music. I think of Deborah Conway, the Cure, the Beatles and Crowded House. I think of the kind of music I first listened to as a teenager. Dad sings your name in songs. He replaces words so that you fit into the lyrics. I thought the song “Dizzy” by Tommy Roe was called “Lizzy” for a very long time, perhaps longer than I care to admit.

Lizzy, my head is spinning

Like a whirl pool it never ends.

My dad doesn’t understand text messaging, or facebook. He thinks twitter is where people “tell you when they’ve been to the bathroom”. He only just recently learnt I have a blog, and is in no way sure what that is. He thinks technology is stupid, but mum is always complaining that he’s on her ipad, playing Word with Friends and reading ebooks.

Like me, dad is obsessive. He’ll get into something, and he’ll get into it hard. He owns and has read every book by Bill Bryson, he’s read Tony Martin’s book Lolly Scramble perhaps 8 times, and laughs at the jokes every time. He likes Community and Modern Family and The Office. When I was little he watched every episode of Red Dwarf many, many times. Also like me, he will never shut up about something he loves. He nearly ruined The Princess Bride for my mum by talking about it hundreds of times before she got to see it.

Dad is the King of nicknames. He doesn’t call any of us kids by our actual names. He calls me Itch, or Ish, or Itchbitch, or Elsbeth, for reasons that are too convoluted to explain.

Sometimes he’ll call me and I’ll assume it’s about something specific, and we’ll spend twenty-five minutes chatting and then I’ll say “so were you calling for a reason?” and then I’ll realise I’ve hurt his feelings because, no, in fact he was just calling for a chat. Other times he’ll call me for something specific and then I’ll start chatting about other stuff and he’ll say “sorry I’m actually in the middle of something” and then he’ll be gone. Those are, in fact, the two kinds of conversations we have on the phone.

My dad and I don’t always know how to communicate, is what I’m saying. It’s as though we move on different planes of existence, and sometimes they coexist, and sometimes they don’t. But I love my dad. Perhaps more than I ever communicate, and he loves me, perhaps more than he ever communicates. And maybe that means we are on the same page after all.