Dominion Post column: Father's Day

As Dad to five kids it was great to be spoilt a bit on Father's Day this weekend.
When I was a kid, in a working class family of 12 kids, there were just too many of us kids, and not enough money to go around, to even pay much attention to birthdays, let alone Father's Day. Anyway, Father's Day just wasn't a big ra-ra back then.
We didn't get to see all that much of our Dad when we were growing up. He was always heading out to work before we got out of bed in the morning, and didn't get home till we were going to bed.
I used to resort to cunning tactics to get to spend time with Dad. If I heard him telling Mum he was going somewhere in the car, I'd go out and hide in the back, and pop up to surprise him when it was too late for him to turn around and take me back.
You'd have to be careful about pulling stunts like that, though. Dad was a big fella, about 6'2'', and he weighed about 18 stone – and that was solid muscle from working in the mines and construction.
The way discipline worked in our house was Mum would read out the charge sheet against us – nine boys and three girls – Dad would line us up, and justice was duly dispensed.
Dad was the only kid in his village to have a Pakeha name: John Hamil Tamihere. A big crowd had come up from the East Coast for a funeral and the village was hard-pressed to feed them.
John Hamil was the first Pakeha shopkeeper to extend credit to my grandfather so those people could be fed. My father was the first baby in the village born after that, so received John Hamil's name as a mark of gratitude.
Dad never talked a lot. He was of a generation of men who were very frugal with their words. They didn't have the time or inclination for chitchat; there was business to be done and they just got on with it.
I remember one time -I must have been about seven years old - when I heard Dad's truck pulling up outside, and I jumped out of bed and ran out in the dark to see him. He was washing away the dirt from the day's work under the cold tap outside.
"Get back inside," he told me.
"I don't want you to see this. I want better for you than this."
That was a pretty powerful moment, even for a seven-year-old. That was the first time I ever saw him embarrassed for me.
Later on, when I was old enough to be able to run away fast enough for him not to catch me, I asked him why he never came to parent teacher meetings like the other kids' parents did.
I used to wonder whether he didn't come because he wasn't proud of me; maybe he didn't love me.
"I can't speak very well. My clothes are old and worn-out. I would just embarrass both you and me," he said.
I walked away from that with a hugely better understanding of my father. It never mattered to me that he couldn't afford good clothes or didn't feel comfortable expressing himself.
But I couldn't tell him that. Not then, and not even as an adult.
Maybe we should have said more, but in a way, as he got older, my Dad had a wonderful presence. He would say few words, but those he did say were like a library.
Maybe my Dad failed me in not being a millionaire, but that's not the point. The point is that we don't stop and tell people – particularly men – how much they mean to us.
Regretfully, many of us don't wake up to the realisation of what our parents mean to us until they have passed away. Dad died in 1999, aged 78 – 24 years more than his father lived, and he said every extra year was a bonus.
The world has moved dramatically since I was a kid. I'm very affectionate with my kids in cuddling them and telling them how much I love them.
But as men we can still be pretty sparing about using the words respect, admiration and love. We can be more generous with our emotions than that – and still be real men.