The Lighthouse

“A lighthouse doesn’t save the ships; it doesn’t go out and rescue them, it’s just this pillar that helps to guide the people home.”

- Lea Michele

As I type this, approximately two weeks before I turn 30, I simply can’t imagine my life with a 10-year-old; a 7-year-old or a 2-year-old. And yet, by the time my dad was thirty, that’s how many children he had and those were our ages. The last of us (and personally my favourite sibling) was to come after he turned thirty.

I was born when my dad was 20 years old, and he had only been married to my mother for a year. They were childhood sweethearts and had met on the tram after school one day. Its personally, my favourite love story of all time.

The Lighthouse meets the Ship

One day, as fate would have it, my dad jumped on the same tram that my mum and her best friend as they travelled home from school. My mum had come from Sicily whilst my dad was first generation Australian with Lebanese parents. As far as small world coincidences go, this had to be the biggest of all, because as it turns out, my mum’s best friend, grew up in the same street as my dad when he was young.

Dad, seeing his opening with my mum, approached his old childhood friend and began reminiscing about old times. As my dad turned to introduce himself to my mum, her steel blue eyes looked him up and down and asked him to go away because he was annoying.

For any lesser man, this would have been enough to scare him away for good, but not my dad. My dad was annoying and annoying also mean being persistent. Fast forward a couple of months and my dad asked my mum to the school dance. Tried to be a gentleman and compliment my mum in the darkness of the school disco.

“Your eyes look lovely tonight” he would say

“How would you know? Its dark in here!” He would retort.

It was a beautiful love story. One that is going strong to this day, 31 years later.

Ships in the Night

Anyone with children will tell you that raising a child in this economy is hard and expensive. There are so many things to think about and having kids so young back then was no different. My dad had us kids on the cusp of the time where raising a family on a single income household was doable, but only just. My mum did her best, but ultimately her place was at home, with me and my younger sister at the time.

My dad had big dreams (still does) but back then he had goals and ideas. Unfortunately, goals and ideas require time, dedication and money. So… my dad got to work and worked and worked.

Throughout all of my primary school years my dad worked hard during the day to get his electrical business off the ground and by night, he was a robotics engineer at a car factory. Sometimes, if I was lucky enough to wake up at the right time, I would hear my dad come home at 1 or 2 in the morning, pop his head into all of our rooms and head to bed, only to wake up again at around 5 in the morning and do it all again.

At least three times a week (minimum) my mum would make us dinner and then we would go on an adventure at night to bring my dad a home cooked meal at the factory. There was something so exciting about piling into the car in the dark and sitting in the car park and waiting for dad to see us all in the car to bring him dinner. He could never stay long, but it was always worth it to see him.

We were always ships in the night my dad and I, but his hard work paid off because his business thrived, we all had a roof over our head, food in our bellies and an education that I am incredibly thankful for to this day.

And so, this continued… all through my primary school and eventually way into the earlier years of my high school.

The pillar that guided me

Bless his soul, my dad always thought I was exceptionally smart and a mathematical genius. In grade six, I had this teacher that didn’t really believe in giving us homework. It was strange really because it wasn’t that he was this cool teacher, but rather, he would just forget. This did not fly with my parents because they were so worried I was going to fall behind and would be accepted into high school. After this went on for a couple of months, my dad had a brilliant idea. He took me to a textbook shop and brought me a mathematics textbook for the year above my grade. He had decided that if my teacher wasn’t going to give me homework, he would do it himself.

Every morning, before he headed out for work, he would leave me a note telling me what pages to work on and that he loved me and to have a great day. Every afternoon, I would come home from school and complete the tasks my dad laid out for me. Now remember, at this time, my dad was still working his two jobs and barely surviving on the three hours’ sleep he would get.

Despite this, every night when he came home at either 1AM or 2AM rather than come up to bed, he would sit at the kitchen table, make himself a cup of tea and would go through my homework, make corrections and ensured I showed my working out. Once I tried to cheat and look at the back of the book, but my dad always knew when I cheated.

It would have been so easy, to just assign me tasks and not think about correcting my work but that wasn’t my dad. He wanted to make sure I had the best even if it meant sacrificing precious sleep to make sure I knew that he saw my effort and was proud of it.

Eventually as I started High School the extra homework had to stop because I got so much work from school and while I was grateful to have stopped doing the extra math, I actually felt a loss. A loss of what felt like a secret connection with my dad passing secret mathematical notes in the dark.

Guiding More than One Ship

Naturally, as I got older so did my siblings. My sister and I ended up going to the same high school at the same time. With this, came an amazing opportunity to create a whole new ritual. This time, one that occurred in the day and one that we got to share with my sister.

With four children, it became hard for my mum to take us all to school and get us there at the same time. So, my mum and dad split the work. Dad would take me and my sister to school and mum would take our younger siblings.

This was amazing, my dad my sister and I would leave the house at 7AM and we would always go to this café and grab a coffee. If dad had a little bit of time we would sit at the café, but if not, we would grab the coffee and head back out. It became our daily ritual and was so well known that we made friends with the morning cleaner. To this day, the cleaner would see my dad and ask about us because he was so proud at how we grew up.

The morning car rides were a way for my dad to learn about our high school lives and what was going on. We always shared everything with him because we knew no matter what, dad was there, and dad would understand. This tradition continued well until I finished high school and then my sister got to continue the ritual solo as she continued her schooling journey.

The lighthouse is the light that shines through the darkness

High School graduation was interesting for me. I literally could not wait to leave. High School didn’t hold fond memories for me as it did for my fellow classmates. As graduation approached, so did the stress of my exams and the jealously I felt for my siblings.

You see, around the time in High School my mum decided that she would go overseas to visit my grandmother. Given that my siblings didn’t have important exams like me, she took them and had to leave me behind with my dad. School had finished but I still had exams to study for, so my dad and I bonded over being left behind.

Nothing was really stand out for me about that trip aside from Graduation Night. It just so happened that mum and the family would still be overseas during graduation. I had a feeling my dad was going to be at work, and no one was going to be at my graduation. But when I mentioned it to dad, he looked at me like I had grown two heads. “No Way!” He said, there was no way he was going to work when his first-born daughter graduated high school. He drove me to the hairdresser to get my hair done and waited patiently while I did my make up.

When I took the stage to receive my graduation certificate, his face stood out amongst the crowd beaming with pride. Pride at me for graduating, but I also think pride at himself because he knew that his hard work got me to where I was. The sacrifice he made when we were young had paid off.

Then came my university graduation. Not the mathematical genius that my dad wanted me to be, but next best thing. Graduating from law school. In order to undertake this degree, I had to move out of home, travel interstate with my sister while we studied at the same university.

I graduated on Valentine’s Day; the crowd was significantly bigger than my high school graduation. I couldn’t see my dad’s face, couldn’t see him at all, actually. I saw my mum and my siblings but not my dad. I faltered a bit as I followed the procession out wondering why my dad wasn’t in the great hall. With my mind turning it over, I almost missed it, my dad waiting outside the hall at the top of the stars holding a graduation teddy bear with a massive smile on his face. The pride that was there for my high school graduation magnified tenfold as he handed me my bear and gave me a hug. He told me he was incredibly proud of me and was excited for what was to come.

Eight years later, That teddy bear still sits proudly on my shelf and I am now practicing in my field in a job that I love. I live in my apartment with my partner and my cat and my sister and her family live 10 minutes away from me.

My life is amazing, and I owe it all to my dad, who sacrificed his 20s, hustled in his 30s and built his empire in his 40s. Now in his 50s I hope that he can retire and enjoy the life he sacrificed for his children.

My dad was the lighthouse of our family who guided all of us in our lives and never failed at his job.