Father's Days

Not surprisingly today I've been thinking about my Dad,  and realising that I don't remember anything specific about any Father's Days spent in my childhood, except for the gift we were encouraged to give him: 5 Hamlet cigars.  Sold as small and compact,  we never knew each one was equivalent to 10 cigarettes.  Smoking 2 or 3 a day, my Dad believed he was cutting down. 

Each year, for Fathers day, we'd ask our Mum

For ideas on what to gift our Dad. Inevitably, 

We'd end up with the neat little box of five Hamlet,

A treat he hadn't bought himself.  

In their compact, cream cardboard box, 

Wrapped elegantly with a printed red ribbon,

Associated forever with the strains of An Air on a G-String,

They were impossibly sophisticated to my young eyes.

My Dad, a smoker since his own childhood, 

Had switched from cigarettes to these miniature cigars, 

Believing them better for his health. 

We'd laugh at his ability to produce a stream

Of dragon breath, at his skill at smoke rings. 

"Happiness is a cigar called Hamlet, 

The mild cigar," each advert ran.

Who wouldn't want to give the gift of happiness?

In his last few years, a lifetime of inhaling

Cost him his choirs, his golf, his seaside walks,

Shrank his life. 

When we'd visit, lined up on the table between him and the TV 

Would be the same three things:

Inhaler, blood testing kit, Hamlet.

He could never give up the comfort they brought him, 

However hard each breath.

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