With a nod to Van Morrison’s Inarticulate Speech of the Heart, this Father’s Day post is a cry for home. I know daddy would love nothing more than to have my brother and me and his grandchildren home for a visit. There would be ice-cream galore, an endless supply of buns and cakes from Ditty’s Home Bakery, perhaps a trip to Lough Neagh to feed swans and stare out at the waters in which my father and Bobby McVeigh trained for long-distance, bitterly cold North Atlantic swims from Ballycastle to Rathlin Islind. Certainly, there would be a detour on the way home for a quick run into the sweet shop where each of those youngsters will be indulged as only a grandfather with a wicked sweet tooth could do. There are so many thousands of miles between us all, that it sometimes breaks my heart to have missed out on all the conversations and cups of tea, the Sunday drives to nowhere in particular, that would have so easily colored our lives had we lived just up the road. Indeed it is from too far away, relying heavily on photographs and phone calls, brown paper packages and greeting cards, Facebook and skype, that our parents have transformed into the grandparents they were so obviously always meant to be, eager for news of their grandchildren’s accomplishments that will be broadcast over hill and dale. Our virtual connection has softened the blow of time and distance for them both, especially for our father.

I cannot help but smile as I imagine da standing over my mother’s shoulder, reading my latest blog post, curiosity and anticipation twinkling behind his reading glasses. He will wonder aloud where in the name of God the past fifty years have gone and then, under his breath, a “Boys a dear,” before he falls silent, coming to the realization that this one’s especially for him . . .

Guest post by my wee brother, Keith Watterson, the image of the man pictured above with me in 1963. Keith lives in Limerick, Ireland, with his wife, Ita, and three little boys, Tom, Charlie, and Joe.

“The answers to some questions float just out of reach through and beyond childhood before parenthood shocks you into the necessity of sharpening up your act when an inquisitive toddler asks you, “Why/what/where/who is that, dad?”

Such questions can range from mildly curious inquiries into phenomena as the composition of rainbows, and the tendency of boats to float on water as against the inevitability of stones sinking—relatively easily explained; thank you, Wikipedia—up to more urgent demands for satisfaction on the stickier issues, of why you are working late (again), and why shops close down (a common one in Ireland, that, these days).

Then of course, there are those moments when you are asked to turn one single, jam-slicked block of Lego into a dinosaur; or draw a picture of Buzz Lightyear on a broken MagnaDoodle with a stylus a quarter-inch in diameter.

There is also the expectation that you can do anything. One of my eldest son Tom’s first almost coherent sentences was: “I break it; dad fix it.”

It’s particularly at moments like these that I think about my own dad, Eric. The remarkable thing about him is that he would be entirely unfazed by the challenge of constructing a Millennium Falcon, a Dalek, or some other space-age gizmo with which he had no familiarity whatsoever, out of the most basic and limited resources.

It’s something that he’s done throughout his life. Dad made a guitar, when he was little more than ten years old, for his younger brother Ben, who then was just a toddler. Ben still plays guitar and a variety of stringed instruments to this day.

Later in life, after he and mam bought their first house, dad pretty much gutted its ground floor, knocking two rooms into one for an extensive kitchen/dining area, and at the back of the house, he added a utility room, fully wired it, plumbed it for a washing machine and added a W.C. He even constructed a permanent glasshouse in which he grew his own tomatoes. Built into one corner of the courtyard, was an enclosed patio area, complete with an ornamental cottage fireplace that had a replica forged iron crane and pot. He painstakingly decorated the outside of the glasshouse with dozens of scallop shells that he had collected from a beach in County Donegal.

From mixing concrete to stripping apart a faulty iron to mend it and rebuild it, it seemed there was nothing he couldn’t do.

Sadly, I inherited none of his impressive skills in handiwork. However, I may have picked up some of his more artistic impulses. He’s one of those people who can sit down and pick out a tune on the piano, even though he has had no formal tuition. It was not uncommon to hear him in full song as he played by ear “When the Saints Go Marching In.” I remember well the huge piano accordion he picked up from time to time to pump out melody. “The Black Velvet Band” was one of his favorites.

Even though dad reads the newspaper every day, I’ve rarely seen him with a book in his hand. However, one of his party pieces when I was young was to recite from memory ‘The Shooting of Dan McGrew’ and ‘The Cremation of Sam McGee’ by Robert Service. Where he learned those poems, I have no idea, but it’s probably my earliest memory of poetry. And listening to his fellow County Derry man Seamus Heaney reading his own poetry always connects me with those impromptu Service workshops from many years ago.

Sometimes all of these memories collide, as memories often will, in a sound or a sensation in an entirely unexpected context. I’ve tried in vain to persuade my sister of my, admittedly whimsical, view that Robbie Robertson of The Band somehow channeled the sound of my dad digging potato drills (or “purdy drills” as he calls them) into the tambourine shiver and tap that punctuates the chorus of ‘Tears of Rage.’ Every time I hear the song, it stops me in my tracks, because somehow it is the sound of my dad’s spade slicing through the soil in the flowerbeds and gently shaking it out, before slicing into the earth again,in a steady rhythm.

I don’t really know what any of this tells you about my dad. There’s a great song by the Wexford artist Pierce Turner, called ‘You Can Never Know’, from his brilliant 1988 album The Sky And The Ground. The song is about how difficult it is to put another person in your shoes; to convey to another person the emotions you experience in particular situations. It begins with the narrator driving along listening to Lou Reed’s ‘Walk on the Wild Side’ before telling us we can never really know what it’s like to experience his childhood memories of standing in a church “full of boy sopranos singing  ‘Faith of our Fathers’ at the top of our hearts.”  Echoing Lou Reed’s famous lyrics when “the colored girls go …,” he sings “It felt so good to hear those choir voicings.” Then the barriers to understanding melt away in a triumphant climax as he sings straight out the hymn’s refrain: “Faith of our fathers! Holy faith! We will be true to thee ’til death.” For me – and I’ve had almost violent disagreements with people about this – it’s one of the most profoundly moving moments in late 20^th century popular music.

Seeing the man perform this song in Whelan’s Pub in Dublin, was simply amazing. In live performance, rather than the polished persuasion of the studio version, the closed door of the title is gleefully kicked open by Turner, as he jumps onto pint-strewn tables to belt out this 19^th century hymn, leading the dozens of people in the audience in euphoric accompaniment. In the live setting, it was as if Turner decided that if, indeed, we can never know what that childhood memory truly felt like, then so what? He would give us the next best thing, and make us feel it through music.

There is a moment in the song when he talks about his father, standing in the church with him on that day, “My father’s hand on my shoulder, nicotine-stained index finger, big and rough, but love can’t always be articulate…” I’ve shared many of those moments, those Van Morrison would refer to as “inarticulate speech” times with my dad, especially in childhood, and unfortunately with much less frequency these days. Dad took me to my very first football match on a foggy St. Stephen’s Day (I think it was at Glentoran, but it was an awfully long time ago); indulged my every request to make things; endured my complete and utter failure to grasp the principles of algebra, of which, naturally, he has an instinctive understanding to rival that of any mathematics teacher; taught me to drive; and he let me ride ‘shotgun’ with him every weekend and on school holidays on his rounds for the Mother’s Pride and then Golden Crust bakeries, for whom he was a delivery man for 10 years or so. He even helped me write a poem about my hometown, Antrim, for a homework exercise assigned by some sadist of a primary school teacher. Actually, he didn’t help me. He just wrote it. “Antrim was a little town, there wasn’t many stores; but many buildings have sprung up, the population’s soared,” went the opening. “The Bluebird Café in the Square, and Craig’s the cobblers, too / have vanished from the local scene; I don’t know what we’ll do,” was another couplet. Alas, the rest is lost in the mists of time.

He’s always been there for me, and has picked me up and dusted me down and set me off again, probably many more times than I’ve deserved.

As I think of him on this Father’s Day, particularly now when I’ve had the pleasure of watching him get to know my own sons, Tom, and his little twin brothers Charlie and Joe, all I can say is that if they learn half as much from me as I’ve learned from him, I’ll be a happy man. And if they don’t, they have the fortunate consolation of a granddad who can actually turn a single block of Lego into something that might meet, or even exceed, their wildest imaginings.

Happy Father’s Day, dad.”