Remembering Dad.

It is Father's Day today in South Africa.  All across the country fathers are being spoilt with biltong and red wine, allowed the remote exclusively, not that that really makes a difference from the norm, and perhaps visiting their dads.  My dad died in 1986 when I was twenty.  He had been ill for most of my life and his death was a sweet release from a life of extremes.  My dad was born in 1914.  He would have been one hundred years old this year.  He was the quintessential Victorian gentleman complete with cravat and pipe.  A quiet, but caring man who drew people to him.  He was an adventurer and an avid teller of wonderful stories which all stemmed from his travels.  My dad was a pilot.  He could fly anything with wings.  From Lancaster bombers to spitfires to biplanes, the list is endless.  The story goes that his passion for flying caused him to run away from a solid career as an architect to live his dream.  He loved Africa.  I am lucky enough to have old sepia photographs he took all over the world.  Vistas from his birds-eye vantage point of hundreds of wildebeest galloping across the Serengeti, herds of marching elephant, sights we will never see again.  He documented everything and it is a wonderful legacy to have.  There is a story, in an old newspaper I have, of him keeping himself and two American tourists alive for two weeks in a remote part of Central Africa before being rescued after the plane he was flying, crashed. My dad fought in WWII and I wear his RAF badge with pride. Later, he became a commercial pilot with BOAC. Unfortunately a combination of injuries from aircrashes and having contracted amoebic dysentery in Central Africa caused him to become chronically ill, mentally as well as physically. As his health deteriorated, he had to stop flying. His mental state was pretty fragile and it caused him to swing between severe depression and manic highs, now called bi-polar disorder. He was a much older dad, but on good days and between his bouts of hospitalisation, he taught me to shoot his massive double-barrel shot gun in the back yard and made sure I knew my way around a car engine. He always had time for questions and stories and made us feel very loved and safe. He constructed bows and arrows, spent hours in the freezing cold at the ice-rink while my sister and I skated or with us at his favourite place, the beach. My dad loved to swim and taught us to be at ease in water from an early age. He would sit on his rock, in his brown dressing gown, smoking his pipe with his beloved dog by his side while we played. I swear I still see him there, at peace with himself and the world.