My Dad!

It’s my Dad’s birthday today. The same day as the Summer Solstice and often the day after Father’s Day. Chinese people normally call their fathers BaBa or Ah Ba. We call ours Dad or Da, the Irish influence there I reckon. Dad was a somewhat elusive figure in our childhoods. He had an extraordinary drive to work and provide for us and he was pretty much always busy. When I was born, he was working at least two different jobs to support my mom and me. He was working as an engineer for Telecom Eireann (or so I’ve been told) and also in the restaurant of a family friend. By the time my brother was born, my parents were running their own restaurant and he worked as a chef 7 days a week, pretty much every week of the year. My Mom did the accounts for the business and raised us kids, working occasional shifts in the restaurant herself when we were short staffed. ‘The Restaurant’ was an important entity of its own in our family and in order to help it get off the ground and thrive in those early years, there were no days off or family holidays. Ours was the first Chinese restaurant in the town, and the first restaurant serving anything other than Irish food. It was crazy busy, and we often had queues down the stairs and into the street. He would normally go to work at 2pm and finish work at 2am. At weekends he would go in earlier to prepare for the busier nights. We didn’t really see Dad because we would only finish school at 3pm. During the weekends and school holidays, we would have to be quiet or play outside so as not to disturb Dad’s sleep and rest. He was always the bad cop in our parental dynamic. Mom would threaten to tell any misbehaviours to Dad like it was the worst thing that could happen. The threat of Santa knowing of our naughtiness was nothing compared to the thought of Dad knowing! Even now, my Mom will say things like ‘Your Dad won’t like that’ as a way of curtailing our behaviour!

Ma and Da at my brother's wedding

At the age of 11 I started going to work with Dad at the weekends and during school holidays. My first job was washing dishes and I progressed to being allowed to help chop vegetables and prepare the mis-en-place and to take orders on the phone and at the takeaway counter. It was hot and hectic work. Dad ruled with an iron will and orchestrated everything so that the kitchen ran like clockwork. I will not lie, he was very demanding, exacting, critical and often difficult to please! He did the same work as everybody else in that kitchen while manning the wok station. We were all in service the hurricane together and I respected him for that. When there was a brief lull, we would take it in turns to sit down in a corner and have something to eat but some evenings there was no lull and we would only eat at the end of the night. I was eventually and somewhat gratefully upgraded (or demoted depending on your point of view) to waitressing instead of working in the kitchen. I would have liked to try it, but I think I was deemed too delicate for the hot and very heavy work of manning the woks and fryers. I have the utmost respect for anyone who works in the restaurant industry. It is truly back breaking, foot wearying and often thankless work. Serving customers front of house was an entirely different sort of challenge but I loved it. It’s something I still enjoy now.

Once the restaurant was more established, my mother insisted that Dad not go to work until we’d had our family meal together after we all got home from school. Opening up and the prep work for the day was delegated and started before Dad got there at 3.30pm or 4pm. It was also once the business had become more established that Dad could take time away for holidays and trips to visit family and friends but it was still a rare occurrence. Our restaurant was only ever closed on the day of Chinese New Year and Christmas Day and Dad worked every weekday, weekend and bank holiday through the rest of the year. At one point, he set up another business in Cork, about an hour and a half drive away from our home town. Some nights, he would finish work in our town in the early hours and then drive to Cork to check how business had gone over there and help prep for the next day before driving home again. My Mom eventually put her foot down and said enough was enough. He’d had some near misses in the car due to exhaustion which terrified her and the takeaway in Cork was then sold to another Chinese family. I‘m pretty sure he would have continued working himself to the bone if not for my mother’s intervention. It was also at her insistence that Dad retired early while they were both still young enough to enjoy the fruits of their labour. Telling him that there was no point in working so hard if he could not actually enjoy life. At this point, his wrists, knees and back were giving him some gip too which emphasised the need to slow down. The hours of standing and cooking everyday were taking their toll.

I reckon that after 30 years of near constant work, Dad deserves an easy retirement. To my memory he never complained, and never wished for anything more of his life than what he has. He is a highly intelligent man, and probably could have had a career as an engineer but he never seemed to resent that he worked in hospitality rather than in what he studied for. I think he liked feeling that what he did was for us. Our Dad is a man of simple pleasures. He’s healthy, he has my Mom, a lovely home, three healthy grown-up kids who don’t demand too much of him, food on his table and the ability to go to visit his family when he wishes to. To Dad, life couldn’t get much better. His contentment with his lot in life is the envy of many around him.

Food is still very important to Dad. He loves nothing more than good food and drink. He is extremely opinionated about what constitutes ‘good’! He does believe his taste in food is definitively the best. Although he is pretty indiscriminate about what he will try. He will always try anything at least once, often a second time even if he didn’t like it the first time, just to be extra sure that the first try wasn’t a fluke. To be fair though, there’s very little he doesn’t like, a part from the things he considers junk food. Sausages were banned in our household, purely because one of his friends had worked in a sausage factory and had told him what went into them. He was adamant that his kids would not be eating that! The foods he dislikes are treated with disdain, like he’s shocked that anyone could like or want to eat such things.

Dad showing off his catch

As children, we were not allowed much in the way of sweets and chocolate on Dad’s mandate, apart from as treats or what our PoPo could sneak us, but he does actually have a very sweet tooth. He loves good quality chocolate and fruit jellies. Ice cream and jelly and baked cheesecakes are some of his favourite desserts. However, I’ve never met anyone who loves a mango more than my Dad. He will happily eat them for breakfast, lunch and dinner when they are in season and his absolute favourite is the Indian Alphonso mango. Mangoes are his passion but he loves all fruit. He also loves seafood. Fish, shellfish, crabs and lobster all delight him. It makes sense that in his retirement, Dad has taken up gardening and fishing. His favourite foods but FREE! Our family WhatsApp is filled with the photos of his latest catch and baskets of his strawberries and tomatoes. The things Dad likes, he can cook and eat repeatedly without boredom much to the despair of those around him. My mother often complains about eating the same things for days or weeks on end. I think Dad wants those around him to share in his pleasure but I don’t think he understands that too much of a good thing is sometimes just too much!

He is a man of few words our Dad. Like many men of his generation, he is somewhat restricted in his ability to understand and express emotions and affection. He was raised with the belief that children should be seen and not heard and that the man of the house was the lord and master of all. He is very opinionated and can be very difficult to live with. He values practicality above all else and he got very used to being obeyed in all things when owning and running a restaurant. Having us three kids has definitely challenged those beliefs! Dad’s desire to maintain his word as law has meant that we have often butted heads through our teenage and young adult years. I don’t think he quite knew what to do with a belligerent and stubbornly independent daughter or sons who very much knew their own minds and would not be told what to do. I think teenaged me broke him (sorry Da!) and my brothers then skipped and hopped all over the remains. Even in those difficult years, we knew that there was nothing our Dad wouldn’t do for us.

Out for dinner in Chester

My brother’s and I know that our Dad shows us his care and love in practical ways. When I was in Uni, he would drive to visit me once a week or once every two weeks on the pretext of coming to get supplies for the restaurant. Really, I think my Mom sent him to check up on me. He’d take me out for lunch or dinner to make sure I was fed and he would drop food supplies or treats to my house that he had picked up from his suppliers. I’m pretty sure I was the only student cooking up langoustines in my Uni house. It was very sweet. When my brothers went to Uni he would drive to Cork to pick them up every weekend so they didn’t have to get the bus. He still does this now if the boys want to come home and don’t have transport. Our Dad is is extremely generous with his time, effort and labour. He is not imaginative but if you ask him for something you need, he will do his very best to help you. If someone, anyone needs something and Dad has it, he will give it to them without a second thought. He doesn’t seek out parties or particularly like big social gatherings but he will spend hours cooking and cleaning in preparation for a party or for guests that my mother has invited. He will serve the guests the best of the food and drinks he has to offer and talk to them despite not really knowing them or having anything much in common with them. He took my Aunts and my cousin in when they returned to Ireland and let them live rent and bill free in his house for months until they found their own places to live and never thought of asking for anything in return or a contribution to the household costs. It was never even a question that they would stay anywhere else than in his home until they were sorted. Whenever I go home for a visit, he will pick me up and drive me back to the airport no matter what time of the day or night it is and he will seek out my favourite foods to cook for me. My mother says it’s because I’m his favourite (and while there may be some truth to that and I‘ve in another country so he sees me far less frequently than my brothers), I think it’s also because I tell him what I like and we both love much of the same foods. Our Dad gave us his strong work ethic, a love of food, an interest in trying new things and his stubbornness too.

Cooking up a storm at Chinese New Year

Showing our Dad some love is easy. He enjoys sharing food and he likes to be appreciated so eating what he cooks and making the appropriate yummy noises will make him very happy. He appreciates being given practical gifts; things that will help him achieve something he wants to do or make his life easier, or even better, something he can eat or drink. If you can get him something that was a bargain, he'll enjoy it even more. The things he considers frivolous or impractical will be disregarded and he buys gifts for people in much the vein. This year for Father’s Day and his Birthday we sent him Welsh Whiskey, Mango Jam and a Grandpa t-shirt. He is a new Grandpa and I’m sure he is going to lavish his granddaughter with affection. She will be the best fed and best kitted out kid around! I cant wait to watch her run rings around him.

We love you Dad. Thank you for all that you have done and continue to do for us. Happy Birthday.