Thank You Anne-Marie

Dad’s Endearing Buoyancy

It was Anne-Marie who taught me love my dad, she
loved hers true although he drank; when I tried to
ride her brother’s bike it was he who saved my life,
jumped aboard, applied the brakes as I accelerated,
straight into a solid wall

Her dad was he who made me realise I could learn to
love mine too; Anne-Marie had heard his droning voice,
saw his impish smile, his wild reactions at my mother’s
concert where he made a raucous noise such as those
one hears at rallies of the ANC

In quiet days of stiff-upper-lip applause I lowered
my embarrassed head as he whistled and clapped in-
appropriately, Anne-Marie turned to me with shining
eyes, said my dad was the only one vibrantly alive
in that stuffy company

She saw he loved my mother - I discovered I’d been
taught pretentiously to ignore him; Anne-Marie loved
his mischievousness and I learnt to see him in her
eyes, he did not drink like hers, though he also sang
the same bawdy songs with outright glee

My dad was a joyous soul shunned in a cold world of
protocol forbidding me sing or eat on the street; though
loud noise and chaos scares me still, I know it is not evil,
simply different style today; grandma Alice never needed
fearing I would grow into an ogress

just because Conan the Barbarian was my dad - I love his
eccentricity though I need grandma’s muted tones and the
soft lines she insisted on, my dad’s buoyancy is endearing,
I do not have to guard against it… thank you Anne-Marie-
you taught me to love unconditionally…