Moments like these

Last night, as the rain lashed against the window panes and we all watched crappy British TV I had a little ohhhhhhh moment. Tucked up in the corner of one of our couches was my dad sitting there in his jimmy jams telling me about how he plays online checkers nearly every night. Now I didn’t realise how into checkers he actually was until then. I knew he dabbled here and there, but as he sat there regaling to me how many games he has won, what level of expertise he was up to and how he was going for the online championship I saw a different side to my dad. Here is this 66 year old Italian Australian man telling me how to log on to the internet to play checkers with people from all over the world. He was telling me that you can chat to people, but not that much and you can not swear because you will get “booted off”. I asked him what he chatted to people about he said “oh not much I just type ‘good move’, ‘be right back’ or ‘are you still there’ you know just stuff like that and you know can write in abbreviated way because it doesn’t take up as much room?”. I thought this was really sweet, now he is talking about getting a mobile phone even though he is dead against them, causing brain cancer and all, but “you know they are very handy sometimes”.

He could never have imagined as a small child growing up in a tiny village in Calabria all those years ago, having to wear hand me down clothes, working from 3am in the morning to 6pm at night from the age of 4 that he would he playing online checkers and contemplating buying a mobile with blue tooth capabilities. I suppose a lot of immigrants have thought the exact same thing. It makes me feel that I really haven’t accomplished much in my life – I really should get cracking.

And another thing I never really realised how small he was, he always felt taller and bigger somehow, now he looks really small.

It was just a really sweet moment.