What kind of childhood memories come to mind when you think of your father?

For me, the most distinct childhood memory I have of my dad comes from 2002 — when as a nine-year-old I ran into my parent's bathroom in the morning only to walk in on my mum telling my dad she wanted a divorce.

I only saw it for a split second, but I’ll never forget the look of desperation on his face as he pleaded with my mum not to leave.

Coming home from work

From then on childhood memories of my dad mostly involved me wondering what time he’d be back home from work.

In those days, I hardly saw him during the week as he often arrived home very late, in the early hours of the morning.

From my room, I could hear the front door open and close, before his heavy footsteps culminated in the sound of his body slumping onto his bed.

The breeze from the preceding slam of his bedroom door was helpful in dissipating the stench of alcohol.

I recall being up way past my bedtime one night in a daring attempt to catch an hour of World Wrestling Entertainment — since my dad wasn’t home, there wasn’t anyone to tell me I couldn’t.

However, my joy was cut short by the jarring sound of a key grinding against a keyhole and a lock being turned.

The ensuing scramble to turn the television off and jump into bed was quite the thrill; it felt like my life was at stake.

That's because if there's one thing my dad hated more than the breaking of the bedtime mandate, it was the sight of two muscle-bound grown men rolling around in tights and choreographed grappling moves.

In truth, he probably caught a glimpse of my heel as I scurried away from the living room and down the corridor, and if not, he no doubt noticed how the voice of excited commenters giving a play-by-play of a wrestling match was cut off abruptly.

But I imagine he was probably too drunk to do anything about it.

Deep breaths on the weekends

While he wasn’t around much on weekdays, my dad did make an effort to take my brother and me out on weekends.

He’d take us out for dinner — normally at an Italian restaurant — and the occasional movie.

It didn’t really matter what the movie was, to be honest, I guess it was just nice for everyone to escape reality for a bit and sit in a dark theatre with nothing to think about except the feeble plot of an animated motion picture.

It was after one of these days out that another of my most vivid childhood memories took place.

My dad had just finished parking the car, when he took a particularly deep breath and sunk deeper into the driver's seat.

My mum had a few days prior introduced me and my brother to the man that would go on to become my stepfather.

Dad looked at us both, took another deep breath, and asked: “Will you still call me your dad in the future?”

It was a rare and startling moment of weakness and insecurity, something I'd never witnessed in my dad before, nor did I see ever again.

Still trying to figure things out

For me as a kid, these experiences culminated in a sense of disappointment in my dad; he just didn't seem like someone I could look up to.

I envied my friends whose parents seemed to have it all together. As a result, I tried to spend as much time as possible with them, awkwardly intruding and imposing myself on their family occasions.

But the truth is that my dad was and still is a broken individual trying to figure things out, just like the rest of us.

I don't think this was something that I fully appreciated until last year when I was going through a break-up of my own.

The ditch of devastation and loneliness that I fell into in the subsequent months must have paled in comparison to the bottomless pit that my Dad must found himself in.

To juggle all those emotions, while carrying the responsibility of being a father must have been tough; I know my first instinct was to shirk all sense of duty.

While to this day I still don't know the exact reasons for my parent's divorce, I don't think it really matters -- there are no winners in this situation.

Unemployment

Nowadays, Dad is happily remarried but that doesn’t mean that everything is going smoothly for him.

In the last few years, I’ve seen my dad lose his job and struggle in his search to find another one.

The blame for this predicament lies on many different parties depending on his mood; sometimes its foreign talent, other times it might be unscrupulous hiring practices, and once in a while he’ll even lower his voice to a hush and place some blame on the government.

Nevertheless, though I’ve never heard him admit it, the sighs at the end of a rant betray the truth of the matter — that he’s approaching an age where having a wealth of experience works against you rather than for you.

It’s the kind of conversation I'm used to having with Uber or Grab drivers, but to now be talking with my dad about it is a little bit surreal.

"We're just going to work this out"

My favourite podcast host, Ira Glass, once said the following about marriage:

“One of the things that’s a comfort in marriage is that there isn’t a door at seven years. And so if something is messed up in the short-term, there’s a comfort of knowing, well, we made this commitment.

And so we’re just going to work this out. And even if tonight we’re not getting along or there’s something between us that doesn’t feel right, you have the comfort of knowing, we’ve got time.”

I think the same kind of idea applies to families too — except in this case, we can't pick and choose who we're saddled with.

In families, we find this notion of permanence and inevitability that is so rare in life. No matter who we become and where we go, it's hard to escape the biological connection we have with our parents and siblings.

In one sense that scares the sh*t out of me — the thought of forever being associated with another human being who's at the very least just as flawed and broken as you are isn't fun.

Inevitably, such a relationship is fraught with disappointments, frustration, and some level of resentment — really, which long-term relationship isn’t?

But in another sense, just as Glass says, it's a great comfort.

The permanence means we have the time to get used to each other's idiosyncrasies and faults.

He's still my dad

There are many things that I've written here that my dad would probably rather I didn't; no one wants to be remembered for how they were at their worst.

And of course, there are genuinely great things about him that I admire.

But I can't just ignore the bad things about him while venerating the positives. It's these two things, in tandem, that make him the man he is.

He is both the man who is frustrated about his lack of employment and the same person who beamed with pride when I told him I'd been hired at my first job.

My dad has the shortest temper I've ever encountered but at the very same time the most generous person I know.

I don’t have a romanticised vision of him; I don’t have any misconceptions about the quality of the human being he is. My dad has his own struggles and complexities.

So when I say "I love you dad", I'm not disregarding the uncomfortable bits — on the contrary, I'm embracing them.

I love him, warts and all.

And now that I'm 26 and I've experienced more of the best, worst, and mediocre of my dad, my answer to the question that he'd asked me all those years ago remains the same:

"You'll always be my dad."

Top image provided by Tristan Koay