Esther McCarthy: He wasn't my biological father, but he was my dad

He smoked too much, unfiltered filthy things. He had a tattoo on his inner arm, a faded rose with his wife’s name in loopy writing, Ann. He had a glass eye he nicknamed Harry.

“I’m just wild about Harry, and Harry is wild about me,” he’d sing.

He had a good voice. He taught me all the names of the bridges in Cork by changing the lyrics to ‘The Cruise of the Calabar’.

His party piece was ‘The Story of My Life’ by Marty Robbins. I remember him singing it the first time I was allowed into The Quinn Ryan on Barrack’s St for a drink with him.

He raised his eyebrows and Harry went a bit askew when I asked for a pint, not a glass, of beer, but he didn’t say anything. He was a feminist in his own way.

He wrote poetry, read everything. He was a strong swimmer, a skillful pool player, great at rings and cards. “A sign of a misspent youth,” he’d say.

He was in the don hall of fame. He always won a turkey and a ham at Christmas time playing the card game. He smelled of smoke and Old Spice, and he waved at planes.

He was an electrician, a foreman with O’Shea’s, working on the Regional Hospital in Wilton in the 1970s, which would become the Cork University Maternity Hospital, where I’d give birth to my boys. Ah, I wish they’d met him.

He worked on the printing press in the Irish Examiner offices in Academy St, I found meticulous handwritten notes about the job recently.

He worked until the tumour behind his eye, misdiagnosed as him imagining things until it was too late, and they had to take his eye out.

He was stoic. Complaining wasn’t in his nature, he’d literally been through the wars. “They used to ration butter,” he’d marvel, slathering it on a crusty heel.

He may have retired early, but he was never idle. “Do a little bit every day,” he’d say. He put the new heating system in our house and built on three extensions.

He showed me how to mix concrete, and lay a brick, and helped me with an essay on Marxism. He was kind to animals, non-judgemental, informed.

He lent his tools to people, and did little jobs for the neighbours. “Always do someone a favour, if you can,” he’d say.

He had great sayings.

“Always eat a bit of bread with a fry.” — “Mo bhrón, said Joan, as she lost last Mass.” — “Even a stopped clock is right twice a day.” — “The man who never made a mistake, never made anything.”

But his best one was, “The children must be minded.”

They had eight kids, then made room in their house for my sister and I when we needed minding, age one and two. He did our homework with us, he brought us to the dentist, he went to the parent/teacher meetings, he made breakfasts.

He’d bring me a slab of toffee every Thursday, pension day.

He adored his wife, Ann, ‘mam’ to us. They were opposites but it worked. She cursed like a sailor. She was wicked and funny and loud and hated alcohol and feared the sea.

He rarely raised his voice; she’d screech the house down. They both loved Spike Milligan, Frank Spencer, Freddie Starr, and when Mike Murphy made Gay Byrne curse on RTÉ.

He read the Irish Examiner and the Echo cover to cover every day.

On Sunday, our thing was going through the papers, daddy Pat and I, sharing out the supplements.

Our favourite was ‘The Sunday Tribune’ and Joe O’Connor’s column, we’d read it and then chat about it. I think he’d get a kick out of me writing this column now.

We used to write to each other all the time, he’d leave little notes around. When I went to Irish college, we wrote each other two letters a week.

When I went to New York for my J1, he wrote to me every week. I found a letter he handed to me at the breakfast table when I was in University College Cork, outlining his worries about me missing classes and being out too late, too often.

He was right and we kept our record of never having a cross word between us. The last letter I wrote for him, I never gave him.

It was thanking him, telling him how much I loved him, ‘cos we didn’t really say it out loud back then.

I didn’t give it to him, because I didn’t want him to think I thought he was dying.

But he was. We both skirted the issue. I was 25 when he died, he was 70. Lung cancer from those deadly Woodbines.

No hospital, he wanted to be at home. I was with him, next to him in his bed, around 3am, when he took his final breath.

One of the last things he said to me was “I can count all my bones”. I thought it was Shakespeare, but it’s a bible quote about suffering.

Mam died three weeks later, to the day.

Any fool can be a father, being a dad takes so much more.

Happy Dad’s Day, Paddy Mac.