Conversation with Dad

I said i’d post conversations that i had with my family, here was the most interesting to me.

I often talk to my dad, mostly about books, tv shows or films. I get my appreciation for art from him and we enjoy sharing opinions. During mylovely week in Porthcawl with the family, we’d pretty much finished talking about what we’d seen or read so it got quiet when we had time alone.

I don’t know why I did it but im glad i did but i asked him about his family. My dad doesn’t often talk about his family. Rough childhood, i think. That, and it never comes up. So when i asked i was surprised when he happily answered.

Your own life gets extraordinary when you know where you came from.

I asked him about his aunties first because i know he loved them. They never married, they worked around britain and ended up back home in Pontypridd where my father grew up. When i asked why they never married he explained that when they worked in a hospital in London it put them off marriage. He didn’t explain further than that and apparently, neither did they.

The reason his mother didn’t join her sisters is because when she was young she was the typical sickie kid. Sickie kid back then, apparently, meant you had TB. She nearly died as a child because of it but voodoo majick healed her. 

You’ll understand why i say voodoo. 

Apparently her doctors last resort for her was to tie a freshly killed sheep’s pair of lungs to her feet. She did that and she lived. VOODOO! 

So she stayed home and failed to get put off the idea of getting married.

I swayed the conversation to his father, then. My pre-existing knowledge of him was only that he was not a nice man. He stopped my father from learning and forced him to work which resulted in my father doing his studying in pubs. He is the reason my father is the functioning alcoholic he is today.

It turned out that my grandfather (who i never met) was quite well liked when he was a young man working in the pits. He had everything going for him. He was even offered a position in the welsh football squad which he took up. However, the week before he left he was working with his minor buddies when a large rock crumbled off a wall and landed on his leg. He was hospitalised and bed-ridden for a long time. This made him bitter, as it would, and he stayed around Pontypridd.

It shocked me that my father is a creation of consequences (as are we all, really). If my nan wasn’t a sickie kid, she would have worked with her sisters and quite probably wouldn’t have married. If my grandfather didn’t suffer a terrible injury he would’ve played football for Wales and may well not have met his wife. He might’ve though, Wales has never had a successful football team.

Family history from my Nan’s time fascinates me. They are such interesting consequences.