Pincushion Island: Father's Day

As Father's Day approaches, I find myself thinking about my Dad, who died a couple of years ago. Yesterday, I posted a few pictures of him on my Facebook site, and the response was so warm hearted, that I wanted to share something I wrote about another Father's Day together. Enjoy... and cherish your Dad while he's there!

Pincushion Island...

With the swing of my mood, I change my desktop image often: from the latest image of Amber, to times long forgotten and people I cherish. This one has been there a while and I can’t seem to let it go. It pokes out below my email panel. Head and bodies are hidden and it’s only the feet that show. 

I knew his feet: Dark and wrinkled as raisins - lumpy yet strong. The heals were gouged with deep cracks bordered by dry dead white scar tissue which often opened and left red dots on the linoleum. There was seldom a day he didn’t support at least one plastic sticky bandage haphazardly on an angle and often scrolled at the edges.

The nails were, more often than not, blackened from long forgotten arguments with the furniture. Nails, hard and thick, had long been trimmed with a clipper because they were too tough for scissors. His feet told the story of his life just as eloquently as his face. Years of barefoot sailing left them bronzed and wide. A youth of high energy gave them a strength not expected in one of his age. The end of a pencil-thin scar started just above his ankle and ended at his hip. From here, doctors harvested veins to keep his heart thumping in his chest.

X closes my email and I click it, to expose the entire image behind. Muscular calves are exposed. His legs are apart and a strong arm flops relaxed between them. The other loosely wrapped around my four-year-old daughter to whom he was the rock on which she then judged all men.

Out of the pocket of his favourite and well-worn collared golf shirt, the pointed tip of an errant feather protrudes. They always found feathers together: Or leaves. I remember bouncing down the boardwalk at Buderim Forest in Autumn. She picked up all the red ones and stacked them in his huge hands. When more space was needed they were shoved in pockets until his clothing bulged and he molted occasional leaves like a parrot dropping its tail feathers.

Behind them the crystal clear skies and sparkling waters of Maroochy River anchor them in the moment. It was one of our adventures in a non-assuming little boat called Tin Lizzie. The picnic had been packed, we launched at Cotton Tree and the three of us ‘put-putted’ across the river to the North Shore. She didn’t go very fast, Tin Lizzie. In fact the engine sometimes didn’t even go at all and we would lock in the oars and make our way at a leisurely pace, time unimportant. We had climbed to the top of Pincushion Island which sat, dejected by its demotion to ‘headland’. So long had it sat in the mouth of the river that the sands had shifted around it. Just as sad, the walk way to the top had long been orange-taped and deemed unsafe. We went anyway. Amber was concerned and we assured her the police were unlikely to follow us.

At the top she stands next to her granddad, barely reaching his shoulders as he sits on the weathered bench. Both delight and uncertainty show on her face. His is relaxed beneath his peaked cap. Spectacle strings dangle and his mouth is slightly parted in an ‘almost-smile’. Beard neatly trimmed and eyes hidden behind dark lenses, his face is welcoming yet proud.

The image captures a time before the holes developed in his memory; before frustration made him less sociable; before his knees and hips refused to carry him up hills. It captures the golden times of old age. Free of work and flushed with spare time, he indulged his granddaughter at a time when she needed him most. Her world was topsy turvey and his constant, reliable presence kept her grounded. No wonder she misses him, and no wonder I prefer to keep him there, wiggling his toes at me, below my email.