Happy birthday, dad

Today's my dad's birthday. And I'm 7536.7 km away.

It's roughly the same distance that separated me from my family on Easter, Christmas, Thanksgiving and my aged bro's 29th birthday. Then there are all the friends who have turned the page on another year without me by their side to buy them a shot or three. Before I get home, I'll have missed Mother's Day too.

A couple weeks back, I had an email conversation with my good friend Scott, in which he said he was "extremely jealous" of all my traveling. Understandable. Hell, it's my life and I'm pretty envious of it. So I certainly hope this post doesn't have even the smallest hint of self-pity in it, as I fully recognize and appreciate the awesomeness that is my current existence.

But there are trade-offs associated with pursuing amazing experiences like this one. In two months' time, who's to say I won't be green with envy for the stability of Scott's full-time job, the independence of having his own apartment, and the freedom of his own set of wheels?

And that doesn't even touch on the many important events I'll have missed in the lives of loved ones.

Last week, an absurdly good British photographer named Aubrey moved into Patrick and Bryna's old room here at 19 Smartfarm. He's been working in Salone off and on since 2004, funding a personal project that focuses on youth in the city through short-term contracts with NGOs. He speaks relatively fluent Krio, and shares my disdain for the many expats that operate in insular bubbles with minimal interaction with Sierra Leoneans. I'm sure we'll get along famously.

A few weeks back, shortly after Aubrey's return to SL, we had dinner over Senegalese to discuss the prospect of him moving in. He mentioned that by returning, he'd just missed his father's 65th birthday celebration. When he first came in 2004, he missed the 60th as well. Those are the types of details that don't get any play in romantic visions of life abroad.

My dad is many different things to many different readers of 42.6. For some, like my aunts and uncles, he is a brother with a famous penchant for long-winded diatribes about the cushy existence of Ontario's teachers.

For others, like my teammates on the Kitchener Selects, he's the parent least likely to miss a game, generally arriving just as the first inning gets underway to watch from atop the hill and disappear as soon as the seventh inning ends - even if his attendance means skipping dinner and driving straight to the park from a courier run to Windsor or Sudbury. I have no doubt that he'll make it to more games this year than I do.

But for me, my dad is simply one of the smartest, most hard-working people I'll ever know. Among some of my other better qualities, he's the man who instilled in me my insane work ethic. My experience as the child of a self-employed small business owner taught me that it was completely normal to work seven-day weeks, and return to work after dinner to get a couple more hours in.

That might explain a lot about the hours I tend to put into my own career pursuits and perhaps it doesn't sound like a good thing to the many friends I don't get to see as much as I would like. But it's also a quality I credit for a lot of my successes to date.

I could go on. His respect for sportsmanship in his years as my baseball coach certainly rubbed off not only on me, but a number of K-W's youth. My boy Polischuk frequently sings his praises even now, years after he last played under my dad's tutelage.

It would've been impossible to sit around the Brown dinner table without developing a healthy skepticism, thanks to his aforementioned diatribes (which do - occasionally - expand their scope to include things like sports, business and politics). Our political ideologies may not be particularly similar, but that critical eye to the world around me has become one of the central attributes I've drawn upon in my brief career in journalism.

And so, on this birthday, it stings a little to have to make do with a 15-minute phone conversation. But on the plus side, as I raise a glass in his honour, half a world away, I can be thankful at least that this isn't a milestone year (for his sake, I'll leave that part a mystery).

Happy birthday, dad.