birthday wishes..

It's my dad's birthday today..The day after the Melbourne Cup and the feast of St Charles Borromeo.. If Dad was still alive he'd be 96.. Because he died at 63 I have trouble picturing him as an old man.. Would he have shrunk in height? have any hair left? be able to see? hear? read? write? still drive? have a walking stick? sound really Aussie when he spoke? (he had a flat, plain voice though he could hold a nice note when he sang) Would he still be going to mass every day? Praying the rosary (his favourite prayer)? Reminding all of us that our main job on earth was to know love and serve God?

I wonder if he'd be outside watering the garden or cutting roses for the lounge room table.. Every now and then he'd have a dance in the kitchen with mum..there'd be hardly any room and she'd have an apron on but there was always a lightness in the way he held her.. she could have been a china vase.. As he got older would he have kept on doing repairs around the house? (he was so practical and could work out the way to do most jobs by himself that it was probably only the installation of an oil heater which never quite came off.. ) Would he have come and stayed with each of us in our homes after we'd married? I'd like to think he would. I wonder if he'd have been close to the 29 grandchildren and 10 great grandchildren who now make up the Devlin clan. Would he have read them stories? Taken them for a walk to the paddock? Shown them how to milk a cow? Mow a lawn? Paint a wall? Would he have encouraged them to barrack for the Tigers? C'arn the Tigers he'd say and he'd look like the boy he must have been in his inner city days.. all energy and camaraderie with his footy going mates..Sport was the one part of his life where he could turn off from the pressure of politics and work.. I wonder if he'd have tipped the winner of this year's Melbourne Cup? The race often fell on his birthday and I still think of it now as his special day.. At night in the week leading up to the race I'd see him studying the form.. He used a technique that involved listing the horses which had been selected only once by the Age and Sun tipsters to come 1st 2nd or 3rd, He'd examine each horse's form over recent starts before finally coming up with his choice. He used to say that those tipsters had some inside information that few people knew about.. This was the knowledge he was looking for when he sat at the table with the papers.. Afterwards it was only a matter of acting on that knowledge with a good bet at the TAB on the morning of the race.. I remember the few times when those leads paid off and he did a jig with the trannie in the kitchen after the race was over.. I liked seeing him this happy.. I liked seeing him relaxed..


I wonder if over the years he'd have become a little less rigid in his approach to life? I hope so..I think he'd have found it hard to change but maybe - that lovely double-sided word full of desire and possibility that lingers in the air when you say it slowly- MAY BE the happiness in the lives of his children might have lead him to think there could be other ways of living.. It was in his nature to think deeply about the purpose of life and he was often intense in conversation which affected his relationships with us.. For him there was just one reality and that was the truth of our Catholic faith.. Nothing else really mattered beyond the journey we were all on..He spoke about the state of grace as though it was a physical place we had to be in..Always..
Were we? Could we be? Was it really all that mattered?


I wonder if he would have ever got to the stage where he worried about the world a little less? Would he have softened his views about the Australian Labor Party? Probably not. I don't think he ever forgot the years before and after the Split.. How astonished he'd have been at the fall of the Berlin wall and the collapse of Communism! I remember how sad our house was when the Hungarian revolution happened.. I was just a small kid but the black and white photos in a Time/Life magazine haunted me for years after I saw them .. His fear that some similar thing might happen in Australia if the Commos took over scared me as well. I took so much notice of what he said.. So often he seemed to be right in the things he spoke about.. I knew he had no interest in wealth or position, he'd say all he wanted was a fair go .. Mum said he changed from the time they were first married when she recalls he was a lot more easy going.. His work with the trade union movement and later the National Civic Council seemed to bring out the worrier - and the warrior- in him.. He was always ready to attack Communist ideas or defend his Catholic beliefs..It just seemed like a hard way to keep the peace..

And so today November 4 2009 it's his 96th birthday.

I hope I see him again and I hope when we meet he'll know me as the daughter he loved as well as the woman I've become. I'd like to look once more into his grey-green eyes and see the part of him I loved .. his humility, his humour, his wisdom, his warmth.. I'd like to think he'll say he missed me too..