My Dad, my Hero

‘Alright, bonny lass.’

It’s the same greeting my Dad has given me since I could toddle into a room and toothlessly grin at him. And it will always be the same greeting. Because no matter how old we both grow, I will always be his little girl.

‘Cute’, some might say.

‘Nauseating,’ say others.

I can’t help it. My Dad is my hero and I am his princess and this has never changed, no matter what the shit-fan of life has thrown at us.

Like most daughters on Father’s Day I will be presenting him with a crap card, (farting gorilla) and an even crappier gift (golf book/Tobelerone…the small toblerone not the massive one that’ll cost him a trip to the dentist for a new set of gnashers). And I will do this despite the fact that, to be quite honest, there is no gift or card on Earth that can quite convey what this slight, balding, wry, old man means to this grumpy, stressed- out, middle-aged mummy.

Thing is my dad is the Carlsberg of Dads. He’s not bigger than your Dad. He’s not an athlete or a professor or an astronaut or a Nobel Prize winner, but he is everything to me.

He’s the guy who lifted me on his shoulders for salty walks along the promenade. He’s the one who taught me the names of all the Capital cities of the world. The person who took me fishing on the rocks and told me not to cry when I skinned my knees, cos crying was for babies. He’s the man who warned me , to no avail, about boys , the one who told me to wear something more appropriate, to be home on time, to not cheek my mother, to get that stuff off my face.

He’s the man who paid the tuition then didn’t get mad when I dropped out, the one who never wavered when I asked, yet again, for the money I needed because Id left yet another job. He’s the one who said it would be okay when I got pregnant to a man I barely knew and He’s the man who held me for hours and hours after Cancer took my mother and I wanted it to take me too.

Now, he’s a Grandad to my two giggling girls and he’s the one who smiles at me and says ‘look how it all turned out….I knew you’d be okay bonny lass’.

And if my Dad says that, then I believe him. Because he’s the man who is steadfast and true and will never ever let me down. So, on this Father’s Day, Dad, I hope you know how much you mean to me and that you are my hero…. And I promise to try and be good from now on….honest!