Frances Whiting: ‘Daggy’ dad moment that changed man’s life forever

An everyday moment stopped this dad in his tracks when he saw his three-year-old son repeating his every move, writes Frances Whiting.

Humidity. Heat. The whisper of a late afternoon storm in the air. A sniff of rain about. The guttural growl of lawnmowers starting up. Men, women and children getting the job done “before the rain starts”. Or after the sun has lost its sting. Or before it finds it.

If Australia had a soundtrack, surely the whirr of the mower’s blades would strike at least one of its notes.

I can still see my (late and great) father, terry towelling hat on head, doggedly pushing the Victa back and forth across the yard, the sun beating on his back. Sometimes my mother would ask me to “run a glass of water” out to him, and he’d down it, hot, sweaty, grateful.

I was thinking about my father this week, when another father rang me up for a long conversation.

Journalist Frances Whiting. Picture: Tara Croser

Wide ranging, dipping in and out of deep and shallow places, robust, funny, personal, miles away from a quick chat. Somewhere in our back and forth, he mentioned that he had not touched a drink in two years.

Now this bloke is an older father. Well known. Successful. Popular. The sort of bloke who enjoys a beer with mates at the cricket. Or the footy. Or the pub.

“Oh,” I said. “What made you decide to stop?”

“Mowing,” he answered and then he told me of an afternoon in his back yard two summers ago. The sort of swollen, heavy, end-of-day where you should get the lawn done before the sky opens up.

So there he was, mowing the yard, and wearing – like his father before him, a cold washer on his head, and then his hat on top of that. Not attractive, as he said, but practical.

The mini-me son was repeating his dad’s every move. Picture: File image

With the song of the blades whirring in his ears, he realised he was not alone. A small shadow appeared in his eyeline. He looked across to see his three-year-old son, pushing his own toy mower beside him.

On the little boy’s head, a wet washer and, on top of that, a hat.

“He’d copied me,” my friend said, “he’d gone and got his own little yellow mower, found a washer, wet it under the tap, found a hat, put it on, and I looked at him and I thought, “That’s it. No more drinking.”

Now, my friend was never a big drinker, but he was a somewhat regular one. A social drinker. Truth be told, a funny as hell one. But he reckoned looking at the mini-me smiling beside him, something big happened. A reckoning. A change. A shift inside.

“I thought, look at this little tacker thinking I’m it. Thinking I’m the man. Thinking I want to be just like this guy. And I realised I wanted to be that guy. I wanted to be the dad who comes home in time for dinner. The guy who is there at bath time. Who reads the bedtime books. The guy who always makes it to the soccer match, “You know that guy, Fran?”

I told him I did. Because I had a guy like that for a dad. And so does my son. And my daughter.

The ones who turn up on the sidelines. The bath time helpers. The book readers. The mowers of lawns. The daggy, wet washer wearers. All the good guys.