Objects across the ages...

When I was a kid, Frank had a water bottle in the door of the fridge of our Gymea house.

That seems a very innocuous thing to remember, but it's an example of how the most seemingly forgettable details about the world around us can make an outsized impact on the infant or adolescent brain (and it's a lesson to all of us with kids and grandkids to be mindful of the influence we're likewise having on them as we go about our lives – often without realising).

It had some sort of branding on it, maybe from some supplier he used to work at during his career in spare parts, and I wish I could remember it. All I can remember is white lettering with blue somewhere, maybe as a drop shadow behind the white letters. Jan might remember it, but she's got 28 years on me and she's had C.R.A.F.T. for years so I'm not hopeful.

It was shortish and stubby, maybe half a lite, and I think I remember it having a wider, thicker nozzle than an average glass bottle, like it was quite well made. I think it also had a frosted finish.

Of course, those memories might be nested among/corrupted by other memories I've formed since and I might have the bottle completely wrong, but what matters is that it existed.

I don't remember ever seeing him drink out of it, and if you know Frank as well as I did you probably never remember him drinking water at all. He was such a creature of habit he might have kept it to take a single swig out of in the morning to freshen his mouth or something.

I also don't know why he preferred it cold – in those days bottled water wasn't a thing in shops, so I assume he just filled it from the tap and put it in the fridge.

I don't remember being forbidden from touching it or drinking out of it, but I remember it having some of strange mystique, which makes me think I was once told not to drink it because it was Dad's. Somewhat counter-intuitively, I know I drank it at least a few times, because the strongest memory I have of this entire story is that it couldn't be just ordinary water, it tasted fantastic.

Of course now, decades later, I realise it was indeed just plain old refrigerated water and didn't taste special at all. It just tasted like something for adults, and that made it very special like it always does when you're a kid, like being allowed to stay up late or going to restaurants.

To this day, I refrigerate drinking water. Everyone else in my family who uses the stuff in my house drinks bottled water from the supermarket, so I'm the only one who drinks tap water.

Living as I do in a major capital city I boil it first so it doesn't taste like the arse end of a chemistry experiment gone wrong, but I get very little satisfaction from room temperature water, I only enjoy it cold.

All of which led me to wonder recently when I thought of that bottle – after over 40 years and for no reason at all – whether it's the reason why.

We're all flickers of life and activity in an infinite void of time, flashes of sparks that are gone far too quickly, but we know a lot of things endure across the ages as we have our children and they have their children, etc.

We always think and hope those things will be profound – teaching them what love and resilience are, what gifts they're going to bring to the world, values and actions we hope will reverberate across time.

But we seldom think about the countless inconsequential habits or handiwork that might still be around after we're gone. I don't know if a glass bottle that sat in the door of a fridge has me convinced cold water tastes better decades after I last thought about it, but that might be one of those inconsequential little bits of Frank still around.

Happy (belated) Father's Day dad...