We’re pleased to announce the winner of the August WWWC: Janette Parr! Janette’s response to the prompt ‘my father’s gift’ is a bittersweet ode to a father with a penchant for procrastination.
Read Janette’s winning entry, ‘Tomorrow’, below.
The pews are filled, but the faces are empty, drained. The organ pumps out sounds without meaning. I can’t find him here. Where are you, Dad?
He died a week last Friday.
He was pushing ninety-five, but it was still a shock.
~~~~
Mam had been telling him for months he had to go and see the doctor.
‘Tomorrow. I’ll go tomorrow,’ he said.
But then he always did. Say it, I mean. Doing was something else.
It wasn’t so much that he said it to keep her quiet. It wasn’t even that he didn’t mean it.
It was just the way he dealt with most things – the way he was made, I suppose.
‘Fix that tap, for cryin’ out loud, Joe!’
‘Tomorrow, Rose. I’ll do it tomorrow.’
‘Get your hair cut, Joe. You don’t half look a mess.’
‘I’ll get it done tomorrow.’
‘Have a word with Pete about that dog, Joe. I’m at my wits’ end.’
‘I’ll talk to ‘im tomorrow.’
~~~~
The music runs out of ideas and stops. Now the minister’s saying something about ‘this devoted family man’. Which he was, but it’s the wrong word. It doesn’t even start to explain Dad.
I don’t think anyone ever could explain Dad. What everyone remembers are his funny ways. And the stories.
~~~~
It was a couple of days after I was born and Mam was trying to sort out what to call me.
‘We’ll talk about it tomorrow.’
‘We’ll talk about it today,’ Mam said, in her firm voice. ‘The forms have to be filled in by tomorrow. Let’s call her Pat.’
’No’, Dad said, ‘That’ll never do.’
And he said a few rude things about a girl called Pat that he knew from the King’s Stag.
‘What about Sandra, then?’
‘Think about it, lass. They’ll call her Sandy. Sandy Bottomley – that’s just asking for trouble.’
’Alright,’ said Mam, ‘what about Brenda, then?’
‘Right,’ he said. ‘Brenda it is. I’ll take the forms in tomorrow.’
And Brenda it was – well, more or less.
Next morning, Dad went over to the registry office with my birth notice. But he missed out a letter and wrote ‘Benda’. Benda! I think he must have been on one the night before, to wet the baby’s head with Uncle Ted and Jackie from down the street.
When he got back with the certificate, Mam spotted it straight away.
‘Just look what you’ve done!’
‘Tomorrow,’ he said. ‘I’ll get it sorted tomorrow.’
But it was too late. And Mam decided nobody would notice anyway.
When your name’s on your birth certificate I think that’s who you are forever. I didn’t even notice it myself until I was about 17, when I went to work for Johnson’s, in Flag Lane, and they asked me to bring in the paperwork. I knew I had to do something. Benda Bottomley! It sounded horrible.
I wondered if it would be all right to squeeze another letter in. Anyway, that’s what I did. I found a matching biro, and put the R in between the B and the E.
‘You can’t do that,’ Mam said. ‘It makes you illegitimate.’
‘Course it doesn’t,’ I said. ‘Anyway, it’s done now.’
~~~~
I smooth out the service sheet I’ve been clutching in my hand. And then I find him. My father’s gift, the same it’s always been: his face smiling cheekily up at me and his own funny way of making me laugh. Under the photo, I read: ‘Loved and dearly missed by his wife, Rose, and daughter, Benda‘.
‘I love you Dad.’ I whisper. My heart feels like it’s breaking, but I laugh away the tears.