Dear Dad,
Deep breath…. I've never said this before, but I'm sorry.
Sorry for being an atrocious teen.
Sorry for spending hours on the phone, back in the pre-mobile days, chatting to school-friends that I had just spent the entire day with.
Sorry for sneaking out at night during that slumber-party – yes the one where the kind gardaí brought a band of 13 year-olds home, it took years for me to see them as kind.
Sorry for being sent home from the school sleep-over in the “Happy House” (it really was called that).
Sorry for always making you late for work by taking too long to get ready for school. I don’t know how you restrained yourself form driving off without us, even just one day.
Sorry for the party. I don’t even know which party I mean. Maybe the one where the kids we didn’t know very well started the car.
Sorry for refusing to eat meat for six years for no good reason, not even on ethical grounds.
And sorry for being too chicken to tell you that I was moving in with a boy.
That boy is now my husband, and you are a granddad.
You’ve gone from being the gate-keeper of the house phone to the person we turn to when the central-heating breaks during the coldest March on record, to bring portable heaters and phone numbers for gas fitters.
The person who drove me to Crumlin for the baby’s appointment, when I was too anxious and nervous to drive myself.
The person who rescued three kids and me on a rainy January morning when we had a flat tyre.
The person who brings my husband to GAA matches and laughs at his jokes.
The person who my three kids adore.
The granddad who brings them for intrepid adventures in the back garden, shows them Jupiter through a telescope, forgives them immediately for picking all the flowers, and tells them that dinosaurs live in forests (“mum, you’re wrong, there really are dinosaurs, Granddad Jack says so and he knows everything”)
Please can I have you on retainer for advice when these three little adventurers become atrocious teens themselves?
Happy Father’s Day,
Love, Andrea