91

91, that's what my dad would've been turning today. Happy Birthday Dad.

It's been just over two years since he passed away.

My dad was not a hands on dad who did a lot of stuff with me, maybe it was different for my brothers, I should ask them. I was a late addition to the family, an after thought if you will. My mom always wanted a girl and at the last minute decided to try one more time. (I joke that she's regretted it ever since, but truthfully it's probably only during the teenage years from 14-18 that she had her doubts). I was the only girl with three older brothers. Maybe he just wasn't the sort of dad that got down on the floor and did stuff with you and that's okay, I'm not exactly that sort of parent either. He was however an incredible man and I never grew up wanting for much. We never had a lot of money for extravagances, but we always went on our camping trip holidays and were well taken care of. He taught me the value of being outdoors, doing family hikes in the mountains, trips to the dam to go sailing and I like to think gave me his gift of lateral thinking to make a plan when necessary. 

My dad was an exceptional man for his wealth of knowledge, I like to think if I inherited a fraction of his intelligence I will get by just fine. If we needed to know anything from chemical compounds to how to weld, he was our go to guy. He played a variety of sports through his years, from cricket, rugby, table tennis, hockey, ball room dancing to lawn bowls by the time he was elderly. He hiked the mountains, he was an avid amateur astronomer and a fantastic slight of hand magician, always entertaining our friends at birthday parties (while we cringed in case he made a mistake). He built us our first fold up caravan (camping trailer for you North Americans) before the collapsible models were on the market, it was a feat of engineering genius, with all the luxuries we could want. This was one of the reasons we were able to go on all those camping holidays. He welded security gates and fences for our home when things reached a point that we needed them. He also glued my burglar bars onto my bedroom window so I could no longer do nightly disappearing tricks when I was a teenager, but perhaps the less said about that the better.

He was a very quiet man, not very vocal unless shouting about injustices of the referee in the latest rugby match. I sometimes wish I'd got to know more of him as an adult, or sat down with him and asked him about his younger years, his time in the army and his family life as a kid. The only bit I know about his army days was during the war he broke his jaw while playing rugby for the army and spent most of his time recuperating at the Oppenheimer house in Johannesburg that had been turned into a convalescent hospital.

He did leave with me the extensive family tree, he did this in his younger years and traced it all the way back to Germany starting with relatives born before 1540. I have tried to continue it on and put all the information into digital copy along with the photos he left. He has left a legacy of 4 kids and 8 grandkids and I hope we have made him proud.