The People Who Teach Us to Show Up

A Father's Day reflection on family, community & learning to show up.

It's Father's Day today.

And when I started thinking about what I might write this week, I found myself thinking about Dad.

Not in a let me list every wonderful thing my father has ever done kind of way. Although, as it turns out, once I started remembering things, that list became ridiculously long.

Instead, I kept coming back to how much of who we become is shaped by the people we grow up watching.

And I learned a lot by watching my Dad.

Dad and I are alike in plenty of ways. I think we look alike. We can certainly both have a temper, although Dad is usually the one trying to keep the peace while I'm sometimes the one challenging it and getting myself into trouble.

I've learned practical things from him my entire life.

Dad taught me how to cook.

He taught me how to pack a car properly - an underrated life skill until you're standing beside a boot full of luggage that apparently "will never fit."

He taught me that many things can be fixed with a can of WD-40, grey tape, a cable tie or some other solution that makes absolutely no sense until it works.

I still ring him when I can't remember what the tyre pressure should be.

And if he's here, I'll still get him to check the tyres for me.

Some things apparently don't require independence.

Dad taught me to drive - all be it between the bunker concrete walls which was more than terrifying. Then here was the time I had to tow a Silo bin!! He gave me my first paid job working on the silo and, when I was a kid, put me in charge of the chookyard.

Growing up as a farmer’s daughter, also meant Dad wasn't the parent who appeared at every school sports day.

Farming didn't stop because there was something happening at school.

And while I was playing netball, Dad was still playing football, so he didn't watch me play much of that either.

Instead, I watched him.

I watched him captain his football team. I watched him win grand finals and lose them.

I watched him race speedway when I was a kid, and passed him tools when he worked on it in the backyard.

I watched him drive tractors, weld in the backyard and teach himself how to do things because something needed doing.

He's rebuilt car motors, built sheds, concreted around the house, fixed plumbing, cut firewood for our open fire and painted my bedroom.

There always seemed to be something being built, repaired, grown or worked out.

And yes, grown.

Dad is a keen gardener.

Tomatoes, pumpkins, potatoes, corn, broad beans, fruit trees, passionfruit - if you can grow it in a backyard or a cardboard milk container, there's a fair chance Dad has given it a go.

I inherited absolutely none of this.

My thumbs are firmly brown. There is not a hint of green to be found.

And he can keep the broad beans and passionfruit too.

The weather, though?

That I did inherit.

We always had a rain gauge, and checking it was just part of life. Growing up in a farming community, rain wasn't merely something that determined whether you needed an umbrella. It mattered.

Although plenty of times there wasn't much in the gauge to get excited about.

Dad taught me not to wish the rain away.

Except at harvest.

Then we definitely didn't want rain, because nobody wants shot grain.

Maybe those early years of watching the weather and checking the rain gauge explain a little of why meteorology eventually became my original career plan.

There were other lessons that had nothing to do with farming.

Dad worked hard. Really hard.

But I also watched him show up.

I remember a train accident when I was at school and Dad helping.

He wasn't a paramedic.

He didn't need to be.

There were people who needed help, so he helped.

I watched him ride out on the fire truck to fires he hadn't started.

I watched him help at the football club.

I watched him stand up and do the readings at church even when I'm fairly certain he would rather not have.

And that wasn't particularly unusual where I grew up.

When you lived in a community, you got involved.

Mum and Dad did it. My grandparents did it too. CWA. Lions. Sporting clubs. Church. Community organisations.

You didn't just live in a community.

You contributed to it.

Looking back, I think that's probably where so much of my own community involvement came from.

When I lived in Alice Springs, I became involved in Finke, Neighbourhood Watch, netball, the Toy Library and other things along the way. Nobody sat me down and told me that was what adults were supposed to do.

I'd simply grown up watching people do it.

I've done far less of that since moving to Swan Hill. If anything, years of committees probably eventually burnt that part of me out a little.

But the lesson stayed.

You show up.

Some of my favourite childhood memories are much quieter.

We spent weeks camping by the river over summer.

Dad would put up the tent, dig us a toilet, take us out in the boat and build a little stick wall in the water so we could swim safely.

Approximately one metre from the riverbank.

There were family holidays to the South Australian coast too - Victor Harbor and Robe were firm favourites. Mum was the organiser behind those trips, but Dad has always loved being around the water.

And he loves fishing.

I do not.

This is another thing that absolutely did not pass down.

He doesn't get nearly enough time to go fishing these days, though, and I hope he finds more of it.

Dad has also travelled much further than those childhood holidays now.

He's stood at the pyramids, walked on the Great Wall of China, visited Abbey Road in London, travelled through Europe and Vietnam.

There's something I love about that.

The farmer who spent so much of his life working and fixing and doing has also gone out and seen some extraordinary parts of the world.

Dad may, however, need to accept some responsibility for another trait I seem to have acquired.

My difficulty throwing things away.

Because you can usually reuse something.

And inevitably, the week after you finally decide to get rid of it will be the exact week you discover what you could have used it for.

This explains far too much about my craft room.

There is one thing Dad and I will probably never agree on.

Time.

Dad hates being late.

I am always late.

I try not to be late.

I plan not to be late.

And somehow I am still late.

I'm sure this has provided him with many opportunities over the years to practise the patience and peacekeeping skills I mentioned earlier.

And these days there are the grandchildren.

Who, apparently, are much more fun than we ever were.

I'm not bitter about it.

Much.

I would, however, still like an inquiry.

The older I get, the more I notice these things.

Not just the big lessons somebody deliberately teaches you, but all the little things you absorb because you've spent years watching them live.

I've also watched Dad experience loss.

His parents. His sister. Some of his closest mates.

I've watched life change around him, as it eventually does around all of us.

And perhaps that's another form of showing up.

We don't always get to fix what's happening.

Sometimes there isn't a can of WD-40, cable tie or roll of grey tape in the world that can make something right.

Sometimes showing up simply means being there.

That feels particularly important to me this September.

This is my seventh year taking part in Liptember and wearing 30 different lip colours in 30 days to help raise awareness and funds for women's mental health.

It's colourful. It's fun. Some of the lip colours will undoubtedly be questionable.

But underneath all of that is a much bigger conversation.

We don't know what somebody else is carrying.

And supporting women's mental health can't only be women's work.

The people around us matter.

Our families. Our friends. Our partners. Our colleagues. Our communities.

The people who ask.

The people who listen.

The people who notice.

The people who simply show up.

Maybe that's why, on Father's Day, I keep coming back to Dad.

I'm sure there are hundreds of things I've learned from him that I've forgotten to mention.

And probably plenty I don't even realise came from him.

But the older I get, the more I recognise how much we learn simply by watching the people around us.

Work hard.

Work things out.

Help when you can.

Be part of your community.

Show up.

And always keep some WD-40 nearby, just in case.

I'll probably continue ringing Dad when I've forgotten my tyre pressure.

He'll continue being annoyed when I'm late.

And hopefully one of these days he'll actually make some time to go fishing.

Maybe I'll even go with him.

Actually...

Let's not get carried away.

Happy Father's Day, Dad.

Be real, not perfect. Be kind. Be brave. Be yourself.