‘Dad, I hope I made you proud’

I WAS a rebellious teen, but Dad never stopped trying to divert me from foolish decisions. His guidance finally did sink in, but I have no way of knowing if he realised, writes Margaret Wenham.

NOT many days go by that I don’t think about my dad.

So for this Father’s Day I’ve been searching for a way to write something meaningful about this man, whose wide, dimpled smile and charismatic, easy manner endeared him to all. But also to convey to all the blokes out there faced with the challenges of parenting, have courage and take heart.

Men and women alike were susceptible to my father’s charm. Not only an entertaining raconteur, he was also a ready listener who greatly enjoyed a joke … and a beer.

Over the years I’ve referenced Dad quite a bit. Some time ago, I wrote angrily about the appalling treatment he received when aged and frail in a private hospital which nearly killed him, and which I’m sure hastened his death.

This past year, in an article about Palestine, I revealed he’d joined the British Palestine Police as a young man in the 1930s.

Marg Wenham's father, John Hetherington, in his military uniform. (Pic: Supplied)

There have been more snippets in other columns — things like he was a post-war, Pommy migrant who adored Australia for its wide open spaces, sunny skies and opportunities, and Australians for their egalitarian spirit and larrikinism.

I’ve also hinted in a few other articles that there was little plain sailing for my parents from when I hit my thoroughly intransigent and iconoclastic teenage straps until … well, for far too many years.

But I can let my father speak for himself about this — his concern about the foolish and hazardous course his youngest daughter was charting, a direction which he could see risked making her adult life far, far tougher and rougher than it needed to be. He can do this because somehow Mum managed to salvage two of the many letters he wrote to me trying to, somehow, get through my thick, mutinous head. He’d prop them up on my pillow for me to find before bed. I’m ashamed to say I angrily disregarded and discarded all of them. Mum found these two survivors when sorting through papers after Dad died.

Margaret Wenham's father, John Hetherington with Margaret (top) and sister Helena. (Pic: Supplied)

The first reads, in part, as follows:

“Roo (his nickname for me), I cannot speak a form of explanation to you unless your non-receptiveness and stubbornness causes me to lose my temper.

“The decision of not wishing to complete your education you must regret for the rest of your life. There is no form of snobbery in stating this. It is a basic fact — based on experience and current trends in life generally.

“The job potential and I don’t mean an ambitious career, just a means of earning a (reasonable) livelihood will be strictly limited … jobs of (only) an unskilled nature or semi-skilled nature will be available … You say you have character and are a mature person. This is not borne out by your present outlook. You tend to look upon school as a uniformed child’s environment. But you are a high school student — many of whom are sensible young adults who carry on a Jekyll & Hyde existence of demure youth seeking educational knowledge for the after high school years for when they enter an increasingly competitive world — and, out of school and studies, a social life to compensate somewhat for material things they think are passing them by.

“Life will pass you by if you don’t think a little deeper than you have been doing … Digest this and with your own individual thinking, try to make something of it. Daddy.”

The second delves uncomfortably into my attention-seeking and extrovert behaviour but also appeals again for me to not leave school, warning the adulthood I was claiming was “phony” for want of higher education and life experience. It was written when I was a couple of months shy of turning 16.

Margaret Wenham's father, John Hetherington, with young Margaret. (Pic: Supplied)

“Roo, I am still trying to delve into whatever motivates your present outlook on life. Firstly you wish to be an immediate adult and accepted as such. This in itself is not unusual — all of us with very few exceptions had this thinking. I had when my father wanted me to attend Chester College. But in those days requirements for employment were not so stringent and my father spoke to a friend whereby I found myself in stockbroking which I never truly liked. I shudder to think where I would have found myself under present conditions with educational standards strictly requested — and with no British Empire bolt holes to disappear into.

“I may not have mentioned this to you, but one of the chief regrets of my life was when Dad died in 1941 and I was unable to obtain leave, denied due to the Middle East crisis. I wanted to say to him, ‘How right you were — please have a drink with me and forgive my stupidity if you can’ … Keep thinking, Daddy.”

Despite my father’s best efforts, I maintained my peculiarly hardy brand of stupidity for many more years. Having carried out my threat to quit school early, I continued to blunder through life as a know-all, no-nothing, with limited employment options, just as he forecast, until my fairly comprehensive capacity for flawed decision-making finally forced a painful self-reckoning.

But it wasn’t until my late 30s that I began waking up to myself — a process that would lead me, eventually, to seeing my awful hubris for what it was — and so it was I set about, belatedly, trying to get my house in order, including finally getting the education I needed to try to improve my income-earning potential to better support my three sons.

But this was still not soon enough for me to work out that I very much needed to say to my father what a world at war had prevented him from saying to say to his.

I have no way of knowing whether, when Dad died 20 years ago, after years of serious ill-health, he could see the seeds of sensibility he’d tried so hard to nurture finally taking root. I dearly hope so — and that I went on to make something of myself and his three grandsons to which he could have been proud.

Margaret Wenham is a columnist for The Courier Mail.