Dad wasn’t always bald and shaped like a hot-air balloon (his description). When he was twenty, he was slim, had a bizarre hairstyle and could ‘bust amazing moves on the dance floor’. This was at a time when people called good dancing ‘busting moves’. Life is better now.
Anyway, Dad went out with a bunch of his mates to a nightclub in Sydney where busting moves was the main aim, along with drinking alcohol to excess and ‘chatting up birds’. (By the way, I asked for a translation of ‘chatting up birds’, and it refers to impressing women with your conversational skills. Never saying ‘chatting up birds’ or ‘busting moves’ would be a good start, but I didn’t mention this to Dad.)
To cut a long and disappointingly boring story short, Dad met Mum on the dance floor. She was a bird and he chatted her up. They busted moves together.
‘So, no gazing across a crowded floor?’ I asked.
‘She bumped into me and I spilled my beer down her dress.’
‘It sank. I couldn’t afford another beer.’
‘Love at first sight?’
‘Got her name wrong for a couple of weeks. Kept calling her Sandra.’ Mum’s name is Catherine.
‘When you proposed, did you get down on one knee?’
‘I sent her a card saying, “Fancy making it legal?”’
‘Dad! Where’s the romance in that?’
‘It must’ve taken the day off.’
At some stage Dad saw the expression on my face and realised that what he thought was jokey good fun was upsetting me. He sat me down on a bench close to the fourteenth hole and waved the players behind us through. This was a huge sacrifice and I knew it.
‘Mate,’ he said. ‘I’m joking with you. Don’t cry.’
It was true. I’d started crying and hadn’t even realised it. I’m such a sook. It’s embarrassing.
‘So that’s not how you met Mum?’
‘That’s exactly how I met your mum,’ he said. He put his arms around my shoulders. ‘And I’m sorry you find it so … disappointing. But I’m telling you the truth. There were no orchestras playing, no rays of light beaming on us, no hearts popping, no … romance. I didn’t love her at first sight. She didn’t love me at first either. In fact, I think she thought I was something of a dill.’
‘But …’
‘But here’s the thing. Once I met your mum I never looked at another woman again. Never felt the need, never got the urge. If she was to leave me or, heaven forbid, die, it would be as if my life lost all meaning, as if … I was living in a dark hole. She’s the first person I think about when I wake up and the last person I think about when I go to sleep.’
‘Dad,’ I said. ‘That’s so romantic.’
‘I don’t know about romantic, but it’s true,’ he said. ‘Now, can I finish this bloody round of golf please? I am not waving any other players through.’