The only gift guide you’ll ever need
The only gift guide you’ll ever need

ParentsSeptember 3, 2020

A Father’s Day guide to the Dadliest gifts of all

Contributing writer
The only gift guide you’ll ever need
The only gift guide you’ll ever need

Stuck for ideas this Father’s Day? Amanda Thompson rounds up a small sample of the best gifts (plus jokes!) for the dad in your life. 

Dads are great, they’re nice to have around. Or so I’ve heard.  I’ve always been a bit vague on the finer points of having a dad since mine was more of a biological footnote than a day-to-day reality. For those of you who can also relate to having to turn away with a trembling lip whenever that kid on the old Spark ad googles “what to do on Father’s Day”, I have good news. I’ve discovered that being a dad is not gender nor biologically specific, it’s simply A Way of Being. “Dadding” is more of a philosophy than a parental status I reckon – more about how you live life than how you once spent two minutes giving life, if you will.

Anyone can embrace Dadlife™! I know I have, and I’ve found it generally more satisfying than my other option, Mumlife™, which seemed to involve a lot of anxiety about organic greens and the whole sociopolitical and pedagogical state of the education system while being weight shamed by Lululemon and ripped to shreds on social media for using tap water. Fun, but not for me.

Moving over to the Dadside means being able to be proud of my Dadbod (why yes Kmart, I will buy that size 18 bikini, wear it openly at the beach, and slap my gorgeous white belly in front of my kids while proudly exclaiming “still got it!”), being able to have hobbies that don’t include being cruel to my Dadbod (why would you take up Boxfit in a world where furniture with built-in cup holders and the History Channel exist?), laughing uncontrollably at puns which I will then repeatedly tell you until you want to smother me in my sleep, shushing my kids when the Six O’Clock News comes on, and refusing to talk about difficult emotions. Or anything, really. I like it very much.

In celebration of my newfound Dadliness, this Sunday I am expecting a welter of excellent gifts that revolve around relaxing my aching back that is being slowly crushed under the weight of family responsibilities on a plush recliner with a pop-out footrest. I would also like no small talk (unless we’re talking about fart jokes, in which case go hard). So here’s a small sample of the best in dad gifts and accompanying joke menu for the dad in your life, whoever he/she/they may be:

Beer glass 

Price: $23.95 (Zazzle.co.nz)

A beery good glass (Photo: Zazzle)

When it comes to beer, nobody knows what a dad’s favourite brand is because the first dad rule is that the cheapest deal is always the best deal. Dads don’t brand buy, they price buy. Dad’s favourite beer is whatever’s on special at the supermarket that week. It probably comes in a can, which is fine because it then gets tipped slowly, at a 45-degree angle, into this special glass with an expression of extreme concentration. 

Matching dad joke: “Ahhh. How good is this beer, aye? I’ll tell you. It’s beery, beery good.” Dad will carefully put down the beer to mime out a drum and cymbal ‘badoomkisssssh!’ After looking around the rest of the family with a delighted smile (not returned) the dad will now drink the beer with complete satisfaction.

Roast Pork Crackling

Price: $10 at any roast shop

The perfect pork crackling (Photo: Amanda Thompson)

I’ve yet to meet a dad who cannot be won over by a good roast dinner. It’s not hard to roast a lump of meat and hack it into slices; the tricky bit is, of course, getting the crackling to crackle evenly without burning or turning into a hard rubber shell. I’ve spent years trying to consistently get that right.

Pro tip: make sure the crackling layer is dry and salted. Score the fat layer with a knife, while your resident dad hangs about, doubled up with uncontrollable laughter as they try to force out “score the meat? About a five outta ten!” Rub in a lot of oil, cook hot and if all else fails, cut the crackling off the meat while it rests and grill the everloving shit out of it.

Just kidding! Real pro tip: don’t bother. In some things culinary, it’s better to leave it to the experts. The greasy bag of golden goodness pictured above came straight from my local roast meals takeaway shop for $10. The cook/owner shall remain nameless or I fear within six months they will be swept into appearing coyly in the NZ Herald’s food pages, wearing a grey linen apron and spruiking their boutique eatery in Ponsonby that specialises in $60 deconstructed slow batch-cooked Maldon salt-rubbed craquelins de porc where you can never get a booking for one of the three tiny tables.

Matching dad joke: Every time a dad ever – and I mean ever – eats a pork-related product, they must eagerly insist it is seafood. The rest of their family will coldly pretend they can’t hear, clench their teeth and possibly visualise lunging across the table and stabbing the dad with their own steak knife, because they’ve heard this one so many times before. But that’s ok, that’s normal. Dads don’t need an audience finding them funny to know they are damn well hilarious. Eventually, an innocent bystander will walk into the trap and ask why pork is seafood, and the answer will be, of course: “Because whenever I see it, I eat it!” Dad will now fall off their chair with mirth. 

Lawn Aerator Sandals 

Price: $21 (Wish.com)

The answer to the question of ‘how to make boat shoes even more dad’ (Photo: Wish)

Is a dad even a dad if they don’t have very strong feelings about fine fescue and mower blade heights?  This ridiculous gift is a total winner because of the skilful combination two great dad loves – owning a very specific tool for a very specific job, and having a super-luxe lush lawn – into one awful sandal that any non-dad person would be too ashamed to buy, let alone wear. Be prepared for a very long and excited lecture about how and why aeration improves turf, complete with some miming out of dad’s best ever lawn maintenance anecdotes. Good times.

Matching dad joke: “‘This grass is a bit patchy said the gardener,’ looking forlorn.” Your dad will need to clutch your arm to actually hold themselves up they will be so weak with laughing.

Dad’s Own Island With None of You Lot On It

Price: $4,553,067 will get you Motu Teta, a private island currently for sale in French Polynesia with no people, phone or internet. Nice.

Motu Teta (Photo: Vladi Private Islands)

If your dad says “Yeah nah I’ve already got everything I need” when you ask what they want, it’s OK to ignore them. Yes, they might well have two pairs of shoes (dads will never understand why anyone needs more than two pairs of shoes) and one full wall of the shed covered in carefully traced tool outlines so they can instantly see which screwdriver you never bloody put back in the right bloody place after “borrowing” it to dig out your Jay Jays gift card that still had a $9 credit from that tiny gap beside the passenger seat, but I bet they don’t have their own island. You can never go wrong with primo real estate and nothing says “thanks, Dad” like a whole landmass with no fools on it to ask for the last scorched almond, touch the Sky remote, or generally annoy dad when there’s a Great Railway Journeys marathon about to start on UKTV. 

Matching dad joke: Everybody dad knows will receive at least one postcard (probably with a map of the island on the front onto which dad will have marked an X in biro and labelled it ME!!) All of them will be signed off “SEA you soon!” and quite possibly sprinkled with tears of laughter. Dad will arrive home before the cards do because they chose the cheapest postage option. 

All Of These Books From My Local Op Shop

Price: $5 for as many as you can carry

Bargain books for dad (Photo: Amanda Thompson)

Dads are old enough and wise enough to know that a well-bent spine on a paperback means you’re looking at a modern literary masterpiece. More good clues are single-word all-caps titles and books called The Something of the Something. Keywords to look out for include “conspiracy”, “night”, “fire”, “dawn”, “blood”, and anything from martial arts or the Greek alphabet (ie Delta, Omega.)

Matching dad joke: “This book is about hands. It’s a real page-turner!” The dad will now throw back their head and guffaw silently for several seconds, eyes tightly closed with just one small tear of hilarity sliding down their face as the room quickly empties.

A Dog They Definitely Don’t Want 

Price: Your position as Favourite Child 

Getting your dad a dog is risky as he may possibly end up loving the new dog more than you. Just like you, a dog is a goofy, lovable dumbass with little emotional regulation and no current life goals beyond filching the last spoonful of prawn fried rice. But at least a dog won’t call dad at 3am drunk-crying that they need a top-up to catch an Uber to get home, or make snarky remarks about boomers when the iPad gets confusing. Use this gift with caution.

If you do decide to get them a dog, go to the SPCA website to find your nearest dog who really needs a reliably kind, patient human with an armchair big enough for two. In other words, a dad.

Matching dad joke: Dad will name the dog Chewbarker just so they can wear one of those t-shirts from Kmart with Han Solo on it when they go to the dog park in the desperate hope someone will ask about it, at which point they may spontaneously combust with joy. They will also start calling their Prius the Millennium Falcon. You will only have yourself to blame.

Keep going!
Photo: Getty Images
Photo: Getty Images

SocietyJuly 29, 2020

Enduring the unendurable: The podcast shining a light on a silent tragedy

Contributing writer
Photo: Getty Images
Photo: Getty Images

It’s a podcast almost four years in the making on a topic ‘shrouded in silence’. Emily Writes speaks to Susie Ferguson about The Unthinkable.

Susie Ferguson is talking about something I desperately don’t want to talk about. Baby death or stillbirth is a heart-breaking subject that many of us instinctively turn away from. Ferguson didn’t turn away. She spent three and a half years working on a podcast to bring it out into the open. The project is personal – five of her friends lost babies in five years in the same city.

“The first time it happened I was really shocked. I remember saying to my husband, ‘Babies don’t die. Not nowadays. They died hundreds of years ago. Not now.’”

Over time, she has seen the pain caused by society’s inability to discuss the topic.

“I started looking at the statistics and this happens to 600 to 700 families a year in New Zealand. It’s twice the road toll. How much money and effort is there in the government response to how many people die on the roads? And there should be! There shouldn’t be people dying on the roads. But at the same time, what are we doing for all of the families who are left bereft? Who leave the hospital or birthing centre after having a pregnancy and they haven’t got a child.”

“It happens an awful lot more than we like to think about,” she says. “Society just doesn’t talk about it. It goes against what we think is the natural order of things. Older people die and we can work out how to make sense of that by saying they had a good innings. But we don’t know what to say about baby death.”

Susie Ferguson (Photo: Rebecca Zephyr Thomas)

The Radio New Zealand podcast is about the human cost. A cost that has been visited upon many, many families for many, many years.

“It’s humanity itself,” Ferguson says. “It’s been happening for generation after generation. Our current situation, in terms of how we don’t give it notice, it’s not healthy.”

Since Ferguson began working on the podcast, many grieving parents have shared their stories with her. It’s easy to imagine her listening, making a cup of tea, genuinely hearing someone.

When you listen to The Unthinkable you hear a journalist with an astounding ability to make people comfortable. Comfortable enough to share the worst days, weeks, months of their lives.

As she talks about society’s inability to face baby death, Ferguson explains how easy it is to just listen.

“You just need to let people tell their story and let them open up. They need someone to just sit with them and let them speak. You need to show kindness – you don’t need a great big list of questions. You just say – tell me about your son, tell me about your daughter.”

This should be easy for people, but few can get the mix of empathy and care right. Ferguson does. When you listen to The Unthinkable you are learning how to hold space for others. You’re learning how to support someone through an impossible tragedy. It is a peek into another world, a lifting of the veil, and you’re being asked to stay. And listen.

“As long as we keep it a silent, under-wraps issue that we’re too frightened to talk about, we’ve got hundreds and hundreds, thousands of families that are grieving and they’re grieving in a society that doesn’t really understand them and doesn’t really know what to do.”

The Unthinkable encourages us to do what we thought we didn’t know how to do. It calls on us to just listen and see these babies, to appreciate and be grateful for their contribution to the lives of their loved ones.

Kate Gudsell and Sam Arcus who feature in the first episode

In the first episode we hear the powerful story of Wren, daughter of Kate Gudsell and Sam Arcus. It’s the gentle details that get you: Kate’s vintage wedding dress. The rosemary in her hair. Her nausea in pregnancy. The little birds for the nursery. Those heady exciting moments of early labour. The contractions app. As a listener you’re with them, you feel the excitement, you also feel the crushing knowledge of what is coming. Sam’s drive from Kenepuru to Wellington Hospital. The thunderstorm. The way she didn’t cry. The dishwasher. The machines that kept their baby alive. Her lips. The Shetland shawl. It’s heart-wrenching. It’s also beautiful.

Baby death is described as unendurable. But as Ferguson says, “they do endure it”. To listen to Gudsell and Arcus speak, you can hear the pain but also the love. Not just the enormous, immense love they have for Wren, but also the deep love for each other. It feels very private, it feels like a privilege to be able to hear their story. To get to know them a little, to get to know Wren a little. Wren who lived for just six days.

The second episode sheds light on the grief of fathers. Lucy and Karl Emson lost their baby girl, Harriet. She lived for just 36 hours. The insights Emson shares are crucial to the conversations we have about grief and masculinity. “There’s still that perception out there I suppose that men don’t cry,” Emson says on the podcast. “Some of my happy memories of Harriet bring on tears. And that’s OK.”

The podcast is a love letter to all families who have endured the unendurable. It gently tells their stories, and we sit in grief with these families as they share their beloved babies with us, the listeners. It reinforces what we know, that the littlest lives can make an enormous difference in the world.

“This story is as old as humanity itself; we just don’t know how to tell it any more,” Ferguson says.

The Unthinkable tells these stories the way they should be told. With love and reverence.

Listen to The Unthinkable here.