Monthly Archives: August 2009

Questions for my father

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I had this notion, so I thought I’d write it down.

My dad just turned 80. He’s far from feeble but I have to acknowledge that he’s getting older and people don’t live for ever. I want to ask him to write some sort of memoir, even if it’s just a timeline of events that we can fill in bit by bit. Because he lived through “important places, times when great events were decided” (to quote Patrick Kavenagh) and did some cool things, and I don’t want to lose that history. Maybe one day one (or both) of my kids, or their kids, will be interested in these things.

So I was thinking, I could send him a sort of questionnaire, to get him started, give him a structure, jog his memory. Then I could ghost write it for him, if he liked. Then we could publish it and make a mint. Or, you know, whatever.

Off the top of my head, some questions:

  • Who were your parents? What did they do in the first world war? When did they meet and marry? Do you know the story of how they met?
  • What are your memories of the second world war in (and outside) London? What was your dad doing in Germany after that?
  • Where did you go to school? Tell me a story from your schooldays.
  • And then you went to the polytechnic to study architecture. What was your first job?
  • Why did you decide to move to America? What was it like in California in the 60s, for a sheltered Catholic boy from England? Why did you decide not to stay?
  • You moved to Ireland instead. How did Ireland become your adopted home?
  • Tell me about your two years in Guatemala.
  • How did you meet my mother? What made you decide to marry her, and you a confirmed batchelor in your 40s? How do you spell batchelor?
  • What happened to your leg?
  • What famous people have you met? (Bono, Sir John Betjeman to name an eclectic couple. Probably the Queen, for all I know.)
  • What building are you most proud of being involved in the creation of?
  • What do you regret that you never got to do, and are unlikely to at this point?
  • What do you want to do next?

Delicious baby

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Little Miss, the Small Sausage, is so delicious right now. At every stage, I think “This has got to be the cutest, right now,” and then a couple of months later she starts doing something new and surpasses herself in cuteness all over again.

Today I am totally smitten with her chunky little legs, so sturdy (she’s got killer glutes, you should see all the squats she does), so plump and edible – I can completely see Johnathan Swift’s point when he recommended eating babies. She has a little tan on her arms and legs (lucky girl – she won’t be like her mother bemoaning her snow-white limbs for an entire adolescence; but I’m sure she’ll find something else to hate, like the little birthmark freckle on her right cheek, for instance) and perfect elbow dimples and wrist creases… and the toes – just right for a snack, a tiny nibble…

Waving not drowning

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The baby turned nine months old and learned to wave today. She was waggling her hand in a puzzling and new way at dinner, and I couldn’t work out what she meant by it. All done? You want to get down? Your hand hurts? But then her father came home and the hand started up again and I realised she was waving for all she was worth.

I told Monkey that Grandad was going to be 80 next week. He said “And then he’ll die?” Since I’ve told him that people get old and then they die, this wasn’t too much of a surprise.
“I hope not for a while yet,” I said, and went on to explain how we’d all die in due course, even me, in many years, and Monkey himself many years after that.
“But I’ll die with you,” he insisted. I laughed it off and we changed the subject.

Several hours later, out of the blue, he said again, “I’ll just die with you, Mummy.” I think he thinks it’s like going to IKEA or something. Maybe it is.