By Gerry Moran

Some photographs are precious. One of those photographs sits on our mantelpiece. I look at it often. And always I linger over it. The photograph is precious for three reasons. One, it was taken on my 21st birthday with my father and mother alongside me; two, it was the day I graduated from University College, Dublin and three, it was the last photograph of my father before he died – five months later on the 10th December, a date engraved on my memory.

The photograph was taken on the steps of Earlsfort Terrace, the last of many photographs to be taken on that day of Arts Graduates as we moved to the brand new campus in Belfield the following term.
My father is wearing MY tie in the photograph; a tie that I had purchased previously to go with my navy suit for the occasion but later found something more fashionable (or so I thought) and offered the tie to my father which he gladly accepted.

I love that simple connection, the tie, if you’ll pardon the pun, between my dad and myself especially in hindsight, knowing that he would be dead five months later.
My father and I didn’t exactly connect – not because of any issues or clash of personalities. Fathers and sons just didn’t connect as such back in the 70s. No fault of son or father. Quite simply it was how things were back then.

And the irony of it all is that my father could connect with anyone; possessed of a pleasant personality he could get on with paupers, princes, poets and popes (not that he knew any princes, poets or popes!). How well he’d get on with them I can’t vouch for, but what I can guarantee is that he would be pleasant company.
I loved my father. But only retrospectively which may sound strange. I didn’t appreciate his gentle nature, his pleasant personality when he was alive. And I didn’t because his wife, my mother, was far too dominant and overshadowed my father’s gentle traits.

But then my mother had to be strong, very strong; times were tough, money was scarce and my mother ruled the roost (as mother hens did) and guided us, her five children, into education and jobs that would stand to us throughout our lives. And they did.

I have outlived my father by seven years now thanks primarily to medication (those little tablets they didn’t have in my father’s day). And few days go by when I do not think about my dad, my da, and get a little emotional.

I especially get emotional about the one, and only, pint I had with him. We were visiting my mother, who was in hospital for a small procedure, and on our way home he invited me, 20 years of age, I think, into a nearby pub for a drink. What we talked about over that pint I have no recollection but what I recollect vividly is when he asked would I like another pint I rejected his offer. ‘Have to meet friends’, I told him.

Whether or not I had to ‘meet friends’ is irrelevant – I should have had that second pint with my dad. Bothers me. Upsets me to this day. Sorry, Dad. What we might have talked about I genuinely have no idea. But it wouldn’t have mattered; we would have bonded quietly, silently perhaps over the few pints. As men do.

My father hailed from Carlow and although I am a proud ‘Kilkenny Cat’ my dad was a proud ‘Scallion Eater’; indeed our back garden (like many a back garden back in the fifties) was planted from top to bottom with spuds, carrots, cabbage, beetroot, lettuce, but primarily with scallions and onions which, needless to say, he was more than fond of.

My father grew so many onions in our back garden that he distributed the surplus to all of our neighbours even to those in the next street.
Regarding my own fatherhood – I have four children and each of them has their own way of addressing me. One calls me Dad (how I always addressed my father) another calls me Gerry, yet another calls me Da while the youngest calls me Father.

Oh, and they all, just like their father and grandfather, love scallions!

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