Midnight Stories

lessons from my father's unfiltered heart

Growing up, my father called everyone an asshole. From the second wife to the kids to the shocked and confused gardener. He had no filter and made no apologies for it.

He was what you would call a salt of the earth man. Tall, sturdy, athletic build with a perfectly round belly hardened by years of beer and whiskey. As a child, I wasn't sure what to make of him. There were moments where you couldn't get two words out of him - quiet and withdrawn, lying on the sofa watching a sports game.

I wonder now if he ever felt depressed. Like life hadn't been kind to him.

Years later, I understand that his anger was a language. A dialect of pain spoken by generations of men who were never taught how to articulate their hurt. In the landscape of his childhood, emotions were landmines—dangerous, unpredictable, better left unexplored. Survival meant building walls, not bridges.

From all the stories he told us, we knew he had a troubled relationship with his father. In fact, from the perspective of a child trying to process adult pain, it felt like he believed his father hated him. He spoke like a man who was heartbroken. His wounds weren't from the untrustworthy arms of a woman but the disdain of an unloving father.

He was raised in a home that didn't feel safe, in a time when dark-skinned children were sent to play at the back of the house. The echoes of apartheid's brutal systemic racism rang through his stories—not just as historical fact, but as personal trauma. How do you grow up feeling less than human and then learn to be fully human?

Emotions only spilled out of him after a bottle of whiskey had burned his throat and awakened his pain. Memories of being told he was too dumb to go to school or not good enough to own a new pair of shoes. These weren't just memories; they were wounds that never fully healed.

His favourite story was the one where he only had one pair of shoes growing up. How he had to wear that single pair to school every day, even when they had holes worn through them. I realise now that those shoes were more than footwear—they were a metaphor for resilience, for making do with what little you have.

He would wake us up at midnight to sit at the dining room table and listen to his stories. He would stand at the stove, frying an egg and a piece of steak. The kitchen door flung open. Mosquitoes fighting to get through the protective gauze of the outer door. Barefoot, weary-eyed children leaning on the tired kitchen table. A loaf of bread and butter spread out. A bottle of tomato sauce. A knife and fork for one.

These midnight sessions were his therapy, long before therapy was accessible or acceptable in our community. He was unburdening himself, trying to make sense of a childhood that had been stripped of tenderness. And we—his children—were his unwitting therapists, his silent witnesses.

As he sat at the table and buttered each slice of bread, he would speak slowly. Transporting himself back in time. To a place where he didn't feel wanted. The shoes with holes, the long walks to school, being sent to live with his grandfather. Leaving school as a teenager. Being forced to work in the sugar mill.

Now, as an adult, I understand these stories weren't just about hardship. They were about survival. About finding dignity in a system designed to rob you of it. About creating meaning from meaninglessness.

As a child, you never really know how much pain your parents endured. How much suffering they went through. How telling their stories at midnight after a long shift was a way for them to process, to get it out of their systems.

We laughed when my father lost his shit and called everyone an asshole. We didn't take him seriously; it was just one of those things we accepted. He couldn't control his emotions because he grew up in a home where he wasn't allowed to have emotions. He was emotionally stunted.

But emotional stunting is a form of survival. When feeling means vulnerability, and vulnerability means danger, you learn to build armour. His armour was loud. His armour was aggressive. His armour was calling the world an asshole before it could call him less than.

Pain is often nuanced. It can be hard and also soft. It can be forceful yet also tender. It can be exhaled in rage and poured out in pillows of tears. The stories he told were drenched in pain. And we were too young to know that.

We were a silent audience. An audience that did not yet have the life experience to understand the layers and delicacy of pain. We were the "assholes" called to the table at midnight. We were the jury unaware of the crime. We were the children who, unbeknownst to us, were providing a safe space for stories to be told.

And in providing that space, we were breaking a cycle. Learning that pain spoken is pain that can begin to heal. That vulnerability is not weakness, but the most profound kind of strength.