What did (immediate) family mean to him?

Most of you know I have two grandchildren in my life. Amelia just turned six months old so she's like a very cute small animal who smiles at me occasionally and needs lot of care and food but we're not relating to each other as humans so much yet.

But since I came back from America last time Lucas and I have become pretty inseparable. He loves coming to our house to the extent that sometimes when I drop him off or say goodbye he cries, which is heartbreaking.

He stays over once a week. I pick him up from school and walk home with him, make his lunch the next morning, read to him in bed, tuck him in, and take him to his tae kwon do lesson once a week.

We play lots of video games together, watch movies, sometimes we have 'boys nights', when we stay up as late as we want, make microwave popcorn, have whatever he wants for dinner and do whatever we (ie, he) wants to do. I don't know how close he is with any of the kids in his class and he's grown up an only child so far, so it feels to me like he considers me his best friend. And I love him to bits.

I'm very conscious of the difference between being a father and a grandparent now. Every time I see something from the world around me that adheres to the stereotype that it's the parents' job to be the bad guys while the grandparents let you get away with murder I can suddenly relate (you know that T shirt you see for toddlers that says 'If Mum says no ask Nana'?).

The other thing it's made me wonder as I look back was how my own father felt about me. I think I've already said on this blog that I related to him more since I grew up, and I think he liked the fact that his kids were two grown up blokes in his life – we could tell off-colour jokes and talk about old times, but I'm pretty sure he was always disappointed I never drank beer or liked football.

But I wish I remember how he responded to me when I was a toddler and a little kid, or that he was here now so I could ask him (although that might not do as much good as I'd like – he never lost his marbles but his memory was a bit addled the last few years of his life; Wendy was complaining to him once about our pool always breaking down and costing money and he agreed by telling her that for all his effort our pool in Gymea never got used. I just looked at him – did he really not remember how I spent every waking hour in that pool every summer?)

I don't remember him being very cuddly or laughing a lot with me – ironically so, because spending happy times with his extended family seemed to be what he enjoyed most. I think he read books to me in bed a handful of times, but I'm too old myself to remember that any more. We had some good times at Heathcote tip or the Cronulla sand hills with the dog, but that was us tagging along with something he had to do.

The only football game I ever attended was the 1983 NRL grand final between Parramatta and his beloved Newtown Jets, but surely that wasn't because I was desperate to go?

Almost everything he did now I look back seemed to be just stuff you did because it was in the job description, not because he really enjoyed it or wanted to. I don't mean to assume he didn't love us, but I think his idea of a Dad was something very practical forged in the 1940s and 1950 when he grew up. You worked and provided for your family until you stopped, either at 6 o'clock in the evening or age 65.

Of the reasons I wish he was still here, one of the biggest is so I can ask him if he really enjoyed having a family. You all know he and Jan's marriage wasn't a hand-in-hand skip through a flowery meadow, but did his children give him any real pleasure other than the satisfaction that he'd fulfilled whatever destiny the environment of his upbringing had instilled in him?

As usual, I'm probably overthinking it to a degree he never would. If I asked him, he'd probably shrug and say 'your mother wanted kids'.