Thursday, 14 December 2006
blood ties.
"Pa" died when I was one. I don't remember him. One year olds seldom do. But i've caught snippets of who he was. I almost feel like he was a fictional character. I'm more familiar with Keats than my own flesh and blood, who apparently loved me very much. I've seen a photograph of him holding me, and it's the only photo where I can see his warmth.
I think he was a fiery man. My father didn't like him. He said that pa was an aggressive man. But so too is my father, perhaps in different ways, but it's there, just as it is in me.
In Australia, there was a famous doctor, Sir Edward 'Weary' Dunlop. He was a doctor who stood up for the troops who were with him in Changi, a POW camp in WWII, and my pa was a nurse there with him and knew him. They probably worked together.
Whenever I see a poppy, I think of the man I never knew and wonder if Sir Edward knew him better.
Apparently pa was different after the war, as men often are. He died not long after he came back. I get the feeling that he should have died over there, because then people would remember him as a man who died for his country, not an aggressive man who once went to war.
But then, if that happened, I wouldn't have seen the photograph of him holding me when I was a baby, I wouldn't have seen the one kind thing I know about him. My grandfather, "pa", once loved a baby enough to hold it for a photograph, and loved the baby enough not to care about the photograph at all, and that baby was me.
That has to count for something.
http://www.siredwarddunlop.com.au/bio.htm
I think he was a fiery man. My father didn't like him. He said that pa was an aggressive man. But so too is my father, perhaps in different ways, but it's there, just as it is in me.
In Australia, there was a famous doctor, Sir Edward 'Weary' Dunlop. He was a doctor who stood up for the troops who were with him in Changi, a POW camp in WWII, and my pa was a nurse there with him and knew him. They probably worked together.
Whenever I see a poppy, I think of the man I never knew and wonder if Sir Edward knew him better.
Apparently pa was different after the war, as men often are. He died not long after he came back. I get the feeling that he should have died over there, because then people would remember him as a man who died for his country, not an aggressive man who once went to war.
But then, if that happened, I wouldn't have seen the photograph of him holding me when I was a baby, I wouldn't have seen the one kind thing I know about him. My grandfather, "pa", once loved a baby enough to hold it for a photograph, and loved the baby enough not to care about the photograph at all, and that baby was me.
That has to count for something.
http://www.siredwarddunlop.com.au/bio.htm
# posted by Hil : Thursday, December 14, 2006
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