He is old now, filled to capacity with memories, some worn from being handled so often, like a child’s favourite soft toy, others still accessible in their original boxes, but not loved as much. He is fat now, filled to capacity with pasta and bread and cheese, especially parmegiano and blue cheese that smells like it grew in old army boots from the Second World War when he was born. He is grey now and bald, but he combs a long strand of hair over the top of his head in a last attempt of vanity and pretence that he has hair. He has cysts under his skin now, he calls them his “sistas” in his Italian accent, and his three grand-daughters screech with laughter and say “Grandpa, they are cysts, sisters are what you would have if you had sisters, but you only have a brother” and he denies he has said that nodding saying “is what I said, sistas” and the argument goes round in circles until everyone is exhausted from laughing hysterically, even him, though he does not know what is so funny. His English grand-daughters’ sense of humour eludes him, but he loves to see them laugh and he feels loved even when it is directed at him.

He is less angry now, he has mellowed with age. Not like when he was younger and his temper would flare and tables were known to crack, when he slammed his fist on them. One right down the middle, in a dining room at a holiday resort run by nuns, where a nun had dared to make a comment that his beloved daughter should finish her dinner or be sent to her room. She was only three, the apple of his eye “whata right does she have-a, she has-a no children, no compassion, hard woman with a barren womb, do you think Christ would say that? Eh? No! He say “suffer the children to come unto me” Basta, I go home!” Fist slammed, table wrecked. A legend in the family, still laughed about over Christmas dinners, with the then three year old, now forty-three, still being lovingly patted, “I protected you, from dat woman, why she want to be cruel to such a beaudiful child, why she no love you, like I do, bah.” And his eyes well up, with tears of pride and love, that his three year old who was so fearful and shy and scared of the world and had clung to his legs and cried when he used to go to choir practice on a Thursday night, has grown into a confident woman in her own right and he knows he was part of that. It is his legacy, his daughter.

He is still irreverent, still flaunts his views about authority and growls that Capitalism will kill the West, that excess and greed will bring whole civilisations down “like-a the Roman Empire”, “Americans, what do they know, eh? Communism will fix them” and then he can’t be stopped, from Mussolini, to Lenin and Stalin, he enters a soliloquy, so familiar that the girls start clearing the dishes and know when to say “yes, Dad “and just leave him to rant and point his finger in the air. Well, half a finger really. He lost half of his right index finger working as a Boilermaker , “I chop him off”, he always says, holding it up for inspection, followed by a throaty laugh, “the Insurance, she pays for my daughter’s degree, I sacrifice for that child”. The family hoots with laughter. It has a wry sense of humour and downplays the fact that he did lose his finger and it did pay for his daughter’s education, even though it was not deliberate. It was what he did, he took care of them, whatever the cost to him personally. Instead they tease him and say “Dad, why is your finger a boy and the Insurance Company a girl?” and they all laugh as he shrugs his shoulders and giggles with them, his big stomach joining in, in waves of mirth. It is what they do, they take serious things and turn them into jokes, it is the family’s coping mechanism. Like her grandmother’s funeral. It was his mother-in-law; she ruled the family, her tiny frame belying her power. She was from Holland, tough but warm and she did not always love her son-in-law, but when she was frail and needed help, he would carry her in his big bear arms and gently put her in the bath, averting his eyes at the once magnificent woman who was now a husk of herself. He did that for two years, never complaining, so that she would not have to live in an old age home. The irony coming at her funeral, after being a pall bearer and carrying her one last time, the hearse failed to start and he had to help push it. He cast his eyes heavenwards and said “one-a last time, I must still push you”. We still laugh until we cry thinking about that and her.

He is deaf now. The years of working next to a furnace and a huge hammer making Powerlines that took electricity to millions of homes, have taken their toll on his ears, but he still loves to sing in his clear, tenor voice, with his Italian accent. His beloved daughter calls him Pava-Rossi, playing with his surname and the great singer Pavarotti’s. He stands in the church choir and sings to his heart’s content, even if he is ahead of the organ and the rest of the congregation. He does not care. He sings because he can, and again his daughters and grand-daughters sit giggling quietly into their sleeves, so they don’t get into trouble for being “bad” in church.

And after church, over coffee, there will be a re-enactment of what he did by the mischievous girls and howling laughter will ensue and he will join in and say “no, you are-a doing it wrong, I do it like this” and he will stand and extend his stomach and belt out a hymn, while the girls wipe their eyes.

He is old now. He is my dad still. And I love him.

I have added a song that always makes me think of him…

And for those of you who need the words…

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Tanya Uncategorized