Some Days Are Diamonds, Some Days Are Stone

Usually when feminists reflect on the path they took to where they are now, politically, ideologically, philosophically, the focus is on women who have inspired them. Mothers, writers, grandmothers, friends, aunts, leaders, daughters, Mitfords, and strangers in the street, all these people and more have contributed to the feminist I am today, and I know they will do so in the future too.

However this post is not about a woman who encouraged and supported me to become a person who believes in the equality of my sex. Instead it is about a man who really did teach me girls can do anything - the first man in my life who taught me anything at all – my father.

Dad was in many ways an old-style Kiwi bloke. Clever with his hands, yet not seen as academically smart, he was streamed into the trades at school and was quickly out of the classroom and working as a builder. My father was a late-comer to the joys of frilly lettuce and preferred a good steak, or, even better, tripe and onions.

He had some old-fashioned manners too, in particular eschewing swearing around the ladies. This led my sister and I to conclude that he didn’t swear himself, and it wasn’t until we both met the men we married, and Dad cussed in front of them, that we discovered otherwise. While my father’s practice of opening doors would be seen by many as paternalistic, for him it was a matter of respect, as with the swearing. And although he was often socially conservative in the way he voted, Dad wouldn’t actually treat people differently himself on the basis of sexuality or race.

Boys aren’t common in my paternal family – my father was the only male in my parents’ generation, just the one son in mine (my cousin Paul), and now only two boys, out of eight children so far, in Wriggly’s. Dad took my XX nature in his stride. He fostered my love of the things some parents put in the Boys Only box, particularly in his generation; rugby, Frank Sinatra, sailing, James Bond movies, science, John Denver, wearing daggy trackpants, and politics. It’s hard to imagine there were many other fathers taking their tweenage daughters to All Black tests at Eden Park, but I guess he must have learnt something from my endless complaints after he and Mum left me behind for the 1987 World Cup final. I turned into a regular little tomboy, right down to a hatred of shopping for clothes, which must have driven my mother a bit batty.

When I was nine my parents introduced me to the organization that shaped my self-esteem in my teen years and beyond – Young Mariners of NZ. Dad had fallen in love with sailing as a young man and I’d enjoyed knocking around on the small keeler he and Mum bought when I was five. When they spotted an advert for a local sailing-type club for girls aged nine and up, all three of us ended up at a cold church hall on a wet week night to find out more. Over twenty years later Dad was still helping out Awataha on the Monday night before he went into hospital, his focus always firmly on sharing with the girls the skills and confidence to sail, row, camp, canoe, and generally be themselves. In my years at Mariners in a leadership role I encountered many fathers who would come along to “help out” but really intending to get a bit of a sneaky sail in themselves, or take advantage of a chance to speed around in the patrol boat. As a stroppy teen I would tell them where to go quite rudely, and I suspect Dad’s quieter approach, explaining the culture of the organization, was more effective.

Dad was always looking for solutions, preferably a resolution that he could bring about himself. He would fix the hems of his overalls with his stapler, tape his broken glasses together, and the same ugly beige cardigan makes appearances in snaps of him taken over a period of twenty years. His instinct was to fix it first, find a replacement at a swap-meet second, and consider not replacing it at all before the absolute last resort of buying a new one. But he wasn’t cheap – he was generous in his spending on others, in money, time and praise. Dad had an attitude of self-reliance and can-do that he passed on to me in spades. He never told me I couldn’t do something because I was a girl, and he encouraged me to try again when I did fail. I absorbed all of this with alacrity.

Both of my parents have been do-ers as long as I can remember. When they saw something that needed fixing in their community they rolled up their sleeves. Often both of them would work together with their different skills – Mum in a financial or fundraising role, Dad in a hands-on practical sense. Most recently this manifested in their commitment to Wipeout Trust, a community group they formed with others in response to local concerns about a young vandal in the neighbourhood. I learnt from my parents’ examples one of the core values at the heart of my politics, and my feminism; that to change something you need to do something.

In my early twenties Dad and I went through a bit of a tough time. I was discovering my own political identity, separate from my parents and very radical compared to his conservatism. It took time to find an equilibrium where we could discuss our different points of view, even argue, without wounding one another. Once we achieved that balance political discussion became a common occurrence again, and when I visited Dad a few days before he died we agreed to disagree about public versus private provision of healthcare.

For all that Dad and I disagreed on many matters political we both encouraged each other to try to make change. On the day I coordinated my first march, for free education, Dad was marching too; in an ACT-sponsored attempt to shame the Government over the Parliamentary Palace concept. I was living at home and there was some worry, on both our parts, that the two crowds might meet in the middle of Queen St. That would have been embarrassing.

For all that Dad must have found my politics baffling at times, he never discouraged me from having my say. I watched the honest and robust political discussion between my parents, and other adults at the grown-up parties they took me too. I saw the respect Dad had for the views of women, my mother foremost amongst them, and so I became puzzled that not all men seemed to act this way. Surrounded by strong women all his life I suppose Dad didn’t have any choice but to treat us as peers, and by the time I came along he was well versed in our equality, despite his quaint attitudes about manners and the like.

When Dad was surprisingly diagnosed with bowel cancer we thought at worst we would all have months together. The prognosis looked good, and, after initially fearing he’d die any moment, I realized that Dad would probably be around to walk Wriggly to kindergarten, and take him to Harbour Stadium. Little did we know we had less than three weeks, and that Dad would slip away when we least expected it.

Five percent of patients develop a leak from surgery to remove a tumour in the bowel, and once the leak starts infection becomes a possible killer. It doesn’t surprise me that my Dad was amongst that one in twenty – he was one in a million himself.