It's a day when I am more contemplative than usual which, for me, is often introspection overload.
But that's a process involving catharsis if you allow it to simply be.
I shall meditate on this day and, like some would have it, relink to the events it commemorates through the wonder of the hidden energies into which we can connect in those magical quiet moments.
Yes, there is magic - you only have to look for it. It's there.
You see, today is the anniversary of my father's birthday and I have no idea how old he would have been in corporeal years had he still been alive today - that's my sister, Norma's department. Girls know that kind of stuff, boys just don't - we're wired differently. He would've been somewhere in his eighties is all I really know.
But I never forget his birthday - how can I - he was my dad. He was the guy who took me to my first football match, always seemed so much larger than life when I was a wee boy and who had that irresistable dad smell - all Old Spice, Embassy filters and - well - dad. A safe, strong place to be. In my dad's arms.
He was the one who put the food on the table, introduced our family to the exotic cuisine he'd experienced as a distant voyager in the Royal Navy. Small children eating prawns and snails or paella wasn't exactly the order of the day in Portobello Edinburgh in the 60's - I doubt if it's the order of the day even now. He was the one who found it more challenging to break barriers in his professional career than he did geographically - he pioneered our relocation from Scotland to South Africa in the 70's rather than fuck around between Edinburgh and Glasgow. If you're going to make a change make it intercontinental why doncha! And I think of that today as we too are poised on another intercontinental excursion - Australia set to become our new home.
And that's where my dad eventually settled and where he died...my mum too.
My mum. That pint-sized firebrand who ran on laughter and goodwill. The woman who kept white spirit vinegar in the fridge much to my horror when it was mistakenly yet capaciously quaffed by a dessicated, hungover son (almost killing him in the process) when I stayed with her on one of my many visits. The elbow wielding, jumper-knitting, people-loving lady who sang to us in the sweetest voice or entertained us with silly rhymes and always encouraged us to be the best people we could ever be.
Diminutive of stature - gigantic in heart.
But even more significantly, as if separation, divorce and bitterness could keep my parents apart, my mother - mum- had other ideas.
Yes, they had been together for over thirty years (seems like a lifetime but isn't really that long when you are in your own special relationship) and they had drifted apart, South Africa and its man's-world ethos playing a potent role in that outcome so they had decided to try another continent to repair the rift. But Australia didn't have that capacity and nor, it turned out, did they.
But we always knew that despite the trials and acrimony that may have recycled throughout their relationship that dad was always the love of mum's life. Even when they were much older and apart, separated by denial, state borders and new relationships - they were always together in spirit.
To the degree that my mum chose to depart this world on his birthday. Yes, she joined him today somewhere, somehow because she knew he knew that they still had that love - the same love we could feel from them as children where unspokenly we had been given a gauge in our lives for what the real thing should feel like.
And I have been blessed enough to have found that.
Thus, on the day that my dad was born and my mum chose to join him in their eternal tryst - I give thanks to them and pay homage for the joy, the laughter, the lessons and most of all for the love.
My tears today are for sadness and for grace and for you.
I miss you both so very much...
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