D is for....

Dad

This is a particularly hard post to write as today is the 5th Anniversary of my Dad's death. I generally try not to dwell on these things and keep extra busy which has worked well today but being that I am due to blog D and he is on my mind I may as ramble for a bit.
He was a pretty busy kind of Dad, I vaguely recall a time when I was fairly young that he worked two jobs. One his normal day job at the Defence place in Salisbury and then also night fill for Woolworths I think it was. I do remember playing with him a good amount as a kid though, backyard cricket, swimming and he would take us up to Para Wirra Recreation park fairly regularly and we would go on long walks and go bird watching.
Twice a year we would head off in the Big Brown Beast (aka Dad's Valiant) to Wallaroo and spend a week or so there, Dad would take us fishing every day, we'd catch worms in the seaweed, build sandcastles on the beach, go crabbing around the rock pools and play frisbee.
I would say that he and I always had a good relationship even from my childhood. I don't think he ever got too mad at me for anything as I was too much of a Daddy's girl to ever want to make him mad at me. I did get in trouble but I wasn't a terrible trouble making kid or anything. I know he used to be frustrated with me at times when I couldn't understand maths homework even though he had just spent a considerable part of the evening explaining it to me but looking back I was really lucky to have a Dad that would actually spend so much time trying to help me out with my homework.
I know he would have liked me to have more direction in my life, perhaps work a bit harder and go to Uni but it wasn't really me and so when I ended up doing waitressing and then onto retail he didn't really understand it. He wasn't a people person and didn't get why I would enjoy working with customers all day, but I did.
I do have to say what a wonderful Dad he was when I met G, the internet was pretty different back then but he was pretty cool with the whole thing and didn't mind too much that I spent copious amounts of time and money talking with G into the wee small hours online. I love that my Dad really liked my choice in husband. It certainly made it much easier than some of my previous relationships with guys he hadn't liked (even if he was right about them all along!) It was also nice that when he and Mum came to the UK for our wedding that he got along so well with G's parents, so well in fact that they all went out for a day and left us behind!
I do wish he was still here, I hate that he has missed out on so much of Abbey's life, and it is so unfair he never got to meet the twins. He and Joe are so alike and I think they would have had a wonderful time together.

More D's about me to come in a future post.