For Father's Day

It's still Father's Day, and though I usually don't post about this holiday, I found this song, sung by Daniel Guichard, who is also the composer, about the awakening - too late - of a man towards his father. The title is Mon Vieux which translates as "my old man", not a compliment, not quite an insult either, but indicating dislike or indifference. Until you reach the end of the song…



In his threadbare overcoat
Summer and winter
He went off in the chilly morning
My old man

Sunday came only once a week
The other days he was earning
our bread, as best he could
My old man

In summer we went to the seashore
You see, it wasn't poverty
But it wasn't paradise either
Oh well, so what

In his threadbare overcoat
For years he took the same
suburban bus
My old man

Evenings, home from his job
He sat without saying a word
He was the silent type
My old man

Sundays were dull
Nobody came to visit
He wasn't unhappy about that
My old man

In his threadbare overcoat
On payday, when he came home,
We could hear him complain a little
My old man

We had heard it all before
The bourgeois, the boss
The Left, the Right, even God
With my old man

We didn't have television
I had to watch it somewhere else
For a few hours - escape!
You know, it's silly.

To think that I spent years
By his side, without looking at him
We barely opened our eyes
The two of us.

What would it have cost me
To take a little walk with him?
It would have made him happy perhaps
My old man.

But when you are just fifteen
Your heart is not big enough
To house all of those things
Do you understand?

Now he is far from here
And when I think about it all, I say to myself
"I would love him to be at my side"
PAPA...