Dadland Quotes

“But in the service when we recite 'They shall not grow old, as we that are left grow old', we both cry. For different reasons. I have become swept up in this. These wiry old lions. Their properness. Their improperness. Their tidy jackets. Their name tags. Their risky humour. Their imagination. Their no shit. I am ashamed of what we haven't done with our freedom and their victories. Living off the fat of the land. With our central heating and our power steering and our fast food and our leaf-blowers and our shopping malls. My tears are self-indulgent: about loss, the world; and about me probably. While Dad is just having a cry.”
― Keggie Carew, Dadland: A Journey into Uncharted Territory

“The jostling of ghosts and soon-to-be-ghosts, yourself included. We think about this, you and I, in private and without telling each other. With morbid secrecy I study your old hand with my younger eye, knowing that soon it will be a lifeless one; it rests on the kitchen table, then fiddles with your penknife; your knuckles and finger joints are a collection of small boulders now, almost bursting through the tissue thin, speckled skin. Your whole body has become geological. Stones and flinty bones. Crags. Hills. Furrows. Fissures. Your nails ridged and calciferous. The frosted forest of your mouth. Breath a mist. Skin starting to resemble a dried lake crust. And ebbing slowly as a pebble, molecule by molecule ... I am now the spy. Spying. Thinking it. And then your hand lies quite still for a moment, and sadness overwhelms me”
― Keggie Carew, Dadland: A Journey into Uncharted Territory

“Dad is up at first light. To birdsong he cannot identify, or maybe it's a frog. He nods to a sentry and leaves the camp. He makes his way to a small rise of higher ground above the bend in the river. A low white mist hangs over the surface as if tethered by strands of invisible silk. He wants a minute to himself; he squints through the mist to the inimical horizon, judges it safe enough to light his pipe. From his breast pocket he fishes out his packet of baccy. Hovers his nose over the sweet odour of the soft brown leaves. He pulls out a few strands, packs them lightly into his pipe's bowl. Then flicks the lid of his lighter and spins the wheel. A blue flame sways as the smell of lighter fuel momentarily overpowers the sweetness of the tobacco. He fills his cheeks with the pungent smoke. Crouched on this haunches, he watches tails of vapour rise and disappear. A warm easterly stipples the surface of the river. A noise from behind him makes his heart skip a beat as two large wings soar over him, like sails, woosh, woosh, slow and beautiful. Reminding him there is still another world. He watches the bird until it melts into the trees on the horizon. for one brief moment, he is wholly astonished at who and where he is.”
― Keggie Carew, Dadland: A Journey into Uncharted Territory