
Happy Father’s and Immigrant Fathers’ Day

To All fathers, and Immigrant fathers
To all fathers and immigrant fathers today, I wish you a happy Father’s Day.
My father was an immigrant dad and a “ guest worker” who was invited by France in the seventies to work in factories, like many foreign dads from around the world, who helped rebuild Western Europe.
My dad was one of many siblings and he never knew his dad. His mother escaped World War II concentration camps, twice, was tortured but she escaped. She worked as a cleaner all her life with deep and painful physical and emotional injuries she struggled to overcome. They were very poor.
Dad told me that it was in France, as a young man in his early twenties, that he started to eat properly as they struggled to put food on the table when he was a boy. His older brother and him also waited for each other to get back home from socialising, taking it in turn to exchange their best clothes and one pair of nice shoes so the other could go out.
Though I paint a picture of hardship, and it was harrowing, there were also very happy times, camaraderie, social connection and everyone helped each other in the Eastern European country he hailed from.
He and we became stateless for a while during the Balkan war. To his greatest despair he was not able to bid farewell to his mother and many others who passed, as his country was bombed.
He loved his country but he could not return after the war as I think his heart was broken.
He was in the same factory job for 45 years, worked very hard and was never late. He struggled to read and write this notoriously difficult language, French, and missed his extended family and friends terribly. Yet, like many immigrant fathers he recreated a family with neighbours, friends and a wider community.
My dad did not have much but gave it willingly. He volunteered all his life as a coach in basket ball until very recently and acted as an older brother to many foreign players, even drove them abroad when their loved ones were sick.
Dad had a very hard life as a young man, and struggled often to show up as a dad due to his past. But he did the very best he could, he was funny, direct and sometimes tough (our car was the only one not burnt during riots in the tough neighbourhood we lived in as he was the “basket ball coach”). To this day young men now mature men and perhaps if grand-dads themselves ask after him. A basket ball tournament was named after him last year.
Despite being something of a tough dad who would not let me go out until I finished my maths and would not let me sing in bands :-), he supported us to be all we wanted to be. He did not have much but bought me my first guitar, my first CD player, my first plane ticket to New York and drove me back and forth to Paris every time I took the plane to study.
I have achieved most of my dreams, my proudest being the first to undertake a Doctorate in our family and to work with patients with acute suffering from around the world. I often think of my grandmother cleaning “doctors’ houses” when I have a break.
And I know I owe so much to my father who had the courage to leave all and everyone he knew and loved, “answering the call” of his soul.
He gave me life, sheltered me, cooked and looked after us so that we could then fly and be free.
Immigrant dads give so much more than the world knows.
Happy Father’s Day Dad and Especially All Immigrant Dads.
❤️Your children love you.❤️