Dads have always confused me. Mine was part of the “strong, silent type” brigade so we didn’t have that typical father-daughter relationship. As a man of Indian heritage who was a young adult during the apartheid regime, his brief as a father was to be a provider, which he did amazingly. But for most of my childhood, I felt a lacking because I wanted the type of father who wanted to play ball or cuddle. Sure, we were our own thing, our own “team” if you will.

On a Sunday morning, my dad and I would wash the cars while my mum and brother would make us breakfast. We discovered that we were very alike, he and I. Elements of our personalities were strikingly similar, far more than merely our almond-shaped eyes. I discovered that my father and I shared a perspective on the world that was joined through our anxious tendencies. 

My father was the oldest son of four children. His father was a jeweller. His mother was a stay-at-home wife, typical of that time. Dad was a hyperactive child who always got into trouble. Inventive, sure, but troublesome to the women who took care of him. He once wanted to make a soccer field behind their home so he set fire to the brambles behind the house to clear the space. That type of behaviour might be classified as innovative as an adult but as a child, it was worrisome to his caregivers. His hyperactivity caused heartache for the women who raised him until he became the breadwinner. 

Whenever I introduced my father to a new friend, I would say “I love him but he is a strange man”. He was an oddball, a misfit for the most part but with unquestionable kindness, generosity and loyalty. The man loved who he loved fiercely but with a love language that wasn’t always clear to the naked eye. His love language was service. I remember working at his medical practice one Saturday and seeing the calibre of his patients. Policemen’s wives, teachers, plumbers. And I asked him why his practice was there, in Chatsworth, because surely he could earn more if he worked at a more affluent hospital. His answer was that this was his community and that being a doctor was about serving one’s community; and indeed, he served his community as a doctor single-mindedly and with a focus that often made me feel overshadowed. The last few years, while not what he would have wanted from a career perspective, gave me my father back. He worked less, he was less stressed and so we got to do stuff together. 

An outing with my father needed to be geared for him, with something that brought him value. He wasn’t one for a languid long lunch or an afternoon of lazing around. He was a doer. He needed to keep himself busy, so I developed an interest in hardware stores and handy work.

Kamini Pather and Rajendran (known as Rajen) Pather. Image: Supplied by the author

Kamini Pather and Rajen Pather. Image: Supplied by the author 

Kamini Pather and her mother. Image: Supplied by the author

My moving back to Durban two years ago offered us time together that I would not trade for anything. Because when I needed to put up shelves, do something on the car or paint anything, I would pick him up and we would go to one of his hardware stores in some dingy alley because who needs to have the luxury when one can walk with the common man. My father did not have airs or graces, no matter what he drove or the successes he’d achieved; on some level, he was always the boy from Clairwood who sold murkoo out of a wooden cart that he had built.  

Another father-daughter date was when we would go for coffee. I picked him up last Father’s Day and we got coffee and sat at the beach and just hung out. Prior to a few years ago, that would never have happened. When we readied my apartment with shelves, new plug points with USB ports etc, I joked with him because while he did the drilling, I changed the wall plugs. I said that we could be the first father-daughter handyman company: ‘PATHER and PATHER’.

My father grew up in poverty. One of the first phrases I recall him saying was “There’s no such thing as a free meal.” This is because he worked hard for everything that he had and while he wanted me to be reminded of this principle, he also made it his duty to make my life so very easy. His love language was “acts of service”; and what he lacked in verbal cues, he made up for in his actions. 

In the 90s, it was rare for families of colour to be taking international holidays every year. Sure, they were coupled with gynaecology learning conferences (which he attended instead of merely checking in for the CPD points, the way many of his peers did) but we got to go and gain perspective on the world that most others did not. As a man of his ilk, he was handy, often to a fault. But he served his family the way that he believed was fit. 

After spending 15 years out of my childhood home, my relationship with my father grew and blossomed. The phrase “parents are people too” allowed me to see that we were both having a human experience as we grew up side by side. 

These last few years saw him open up in ways that I always dreamed of when I was younger. And I cherish that I got to have them. In the two years before he died, I got to feel that I was his favourite, the way that it was when I was a child. One of the things I will miss most about him not being around is the feeling that irrespective of what I did, I was his favourite person in the world. 

In the wake of my father’s passing, I am reminded of his meagre beginnings. I am reminded of how hard he worked to give me the life that I have and the opportunities that have shaped my world view. He didn’t understand me sometimes because the world that he grew up in and my world were so different but the fact that we shared a similar palate – I always knew what he would like on a menu – made us close in ways that cannot be expressed. The connection was never about words; it was always about acts of service. 

My father’s untimely death has made it abundantly clear that I have work to do in this world. He was a man of few words but his gestures told the tales of a man who would do anything for his family. And ironically, his massive heart was what brought him to his end. I stand in the wake of my father’s legacy with a commitment to becoming at least half the person that he was. DM/ ML

Lessons from My Father is a series of interviews and stories collected and written by Steve Anderson. Anderson has been a high school teacher for 32 years, 26 of them at two schools in East London and the past six at a school in Cape Town where he heads up the Wellness and Development Department and teaches English and Life Orientation. Throughout his career he has had an interest in the part fathers play in the lives of their children. He says: “This series is not about holding up those who are featured as being ‘The Perfect Father’. It is simply a collection of stories, each told by a son or daughter whose life was, or whose life has been in some way, positively impacted by their father… And it doesn’t take away the significant part played by mothering figures in the shaping of their children. Theirs are the stories of another series!