My Father Retired and I Finally Learned What He Wanted

The Envelope With No Ideas In It

For most of my adult life I have given my father the same present. It is an envelope. Sometimes it has a voucher in it, sometimes cash, once an embarrassing printout of a hot air balloon booking that we never used. He always says thank you, puts it in the drawer by the front door, and that is the end of it.

This year was supposed to be different. My dad retired at the end of September after forty one years at the same firm in Pretoria. Forty one years of the same parking bay, the same lunch box, the same grey suit on the same hook behind the door. His colleagues were throwing him a golf day in early December, and my mother made it very clear, over the phone and then again in person, that an envelope would not do.

"He has never had anything nice for himself," she said. "Not once. Do something about it."

So I sat in my car outside their house after Sunday lunch, staring at the steering wheel, and realised I had absolutely no idea what my father liked.

What I Did Not Know About My Own Dad

It is a strange thing to discover at thirty eight. I knew his favourite rugby team, his opinions on the Springbok coach, and the exact way he likes his steak. I did not know his shirt size. I did not know whether he liked bright colours or hated them. I had never once seen him shop for himself. Everything he owned seemed to have arrived in the house by accident, mostly from my mother, a few things from conferences, and one terrible Christmas jersey from an aunt in Bloemfontein.

When I asked my mother, she laughed. "He wears what is clean," she said. "That is his whole system."

That was not much to go on. But it did tell me something. A man who wears what is clean, every day, for forty one years, does not need more things. He needs one or two good things that make him feel like the day is his.

Watching Him on the Course

The next weekend I went with him to the driving range in Centurion. I told him it was to practise for the golf day, which was half true. Mostly I wanted to watch him.

He arrived in a shirt that had once been navy and was now a sort of tired blue grey, with the logo of a software company he had dealt with in 2014 still on the chest. By the third bucket of balls the collar had curled up on one side and he kept pulling at it. When the sun came out properly, the shirt clung to his back and he stopped between shots to flap it away from his skin.

He did not complain. My father never complains. But I noticed that he kept looking at the man in the next bay, an older gentleman in a crisp polo that sat flat on his shoulders and looked just as good on his last swing as on his first.

On the drive home I asked him, as casually as I could, whether he liked that man's shirt.

"Very smart," he said. "Must have cost a fortune." And then he changed the subject to the cricket.

The Shopping I Had Been Avoiding

I am not a natural shopper either. I take after him in that. But I had a mission now, and a deadline, so on a quiet Tuesday evening I went to look properly.

I had written his rough measurements on my phone, which I had guessed by holding one of my own shirts up against him while he was asleep on the couch after lunch. My mother had confirmed the size from the label of the one shirt he actually liked. That was the first useful thing I had done.

I knew I wanted golf shirts, not a jersey or a gadget. I wanted something he would wear on the day in front of the people he had worked with for four decades, and then keep wearing afterwards to the braai, to church on a hot morning, to the coffee shop on a Saturday. A shirt that would not curl at the collar after the second wash.

I spent longer than I expected feeling the fabric. The ones I liked were soft and slightly textured, with a collar that held its shape. The little embroidered rabbit on the chest made me smile, because it was the kind of detail you only notice up close, which is exactly my father. He has never wanted to be noticed from across a room.

I bought two. One a deep green, because his old rugby club colours are green and he still talks about a try he scored in 1979. One a plain white, because my mother said he would actually wear white.

A Small Joke for the Pool

Then I did something slightly silly. My parents spend every December at a timeshare near Margate, and my father swims every morning, very slowly, for exactly twenty minutes. His swimming costume is older than my younger sister.

While I was looking around I found swim shorts with a print that changes colour when it gets wet. I stood there grinning like a child. I could already picture him walking into the pool at seven in the morning, looking down, and seeing the pattern bloom into a different colour. He would pretend to be unimpressed. He would also tell every single person at the timeshare.

I bought them. It was the first impulse purchase I have ever made for my father.

The Golf Day

I gave him the shirts a week before the golf day, in a proper bag, not an envelope. He opened it slowly, the way he opens everything, folding the tissue paper because my mother saves it.

He held the green one up and did not say anything for a long moment. Then he said, "This is too nice for me."

"No, Dad," I said. "It is exactly nice enough."

He wore the green one on the day. I was not there, but my mother sent photos all afternoon. Him on the first tee with his colleagues around him. Him laughing at something in the clubhouse. Him at the prize giving holding a trophy for the longest drive that I am fairly sure his old boss arranged. In every photo the collar sat flat, and he looked, for the first time I can remember, like a man who had dressed for himself.

What I Actually Learned

The shirts were not really the point. The point was that I had spent years giving my father things he could put in a drawer because I did not want to do the work of knowing him. Watching him at the range, asking my mother about his sizes, standing in front of a rail of shirts wondering what he would feel comfortable in, all of that was the present. The shirts were just the proof.

He sent me a message from Margate on the second morning of their holiday. It was a photo of his legs in the pool, the swim shorts already turned a bright new colour in the water. Underneath he had written three words.

"Your mother laughed."

Coming from my father, that is practically a speech.

Next year I already know what I am doing. I am not buying an envelope. I am going to the driving range first.