My father had an improbably sweet view of life on earth. Which is strange, thinking that he came from hardy farming and mining stock and lived through both World Wars and the then-Rhodesian bush war. He had a never-ending fund of stories about his life and my biggest regret is that I never wrote them down before he died.
Dad was born in 1905 onto a farm in Southern Rhodesia. That was what he did. He farmed. Bush, cattle and buck. His interests. In that order. Water, dip, mielies, whirlwinds, dust, gun dogs, gold mines, grass and acacia trees. The list of what evokes him and his stories is endless. By the time I really knew him, he had settled into a farming life in town and went almost daily out into the sometimes harsh and often beautiful Rhodesian bush to tend to his cattle and do what farmers do all day!
He only stopped farming in the Seventies when it became too dangerous to go alone onto the farm because of the armed struggle raging throughout the country. The farm was sold and he passed away soon after.
But Dad was a sentimentalist, a softy at heart. He cried when he was touched and loved romance. Louis Armstrong’s gravelly deep throated singing suited him just fine. He’d sing along with him
I see trees of green, red roses too
I see them bloom for me and you
And I think to myself what a wonderful world.
And you knew he really did love us, his family, and the countryside around him.
I often wonder how many of our memories from childhood are real and how much is built up like lego blocks from things we hear. Things that then become your memories. Are they things that really happened to you or did they happen to someone else? If you think your parents felt one way, did they really? Are you just projecting your ideas and opinions onto them and believe they must have felt the same way?
I read a moving newspaper commentary recently by a columnist who was honest enough to talk about having strong opinions. As he said, something happens, often something atrocious in another part of the world, and within hours of it happening, comment is already out there. So how does what you hear or read affect you? Does your opinion change depending on what you read? Should it?
If you feel sympathy for the victims of an attack, is it bad that you haven’t felt as strongly about victims somewhere else? And if you don’t express your opinion? Is it worse to not say something or to say something that seems inappropriate to some people?
He ends saying that all you can really do is to talk about your own feelings, your own opinions, however unsure you may be or whether you think you have said everything there is to be said. Not many people do that.
And then again ... 