tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23098014332724409432024-03-13T18:22:01.102+00:00Stay at home dadA difficult job at the best of timesStay at home dadhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07943310521217164291noreply@blogger.comBlogger96125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2309801433272440943.post-31270089241655600612023-05-02T14:18:00.010+01:002023-05-02T14:24:22.797+01:00Away with the Birds
I’m dozing at about 7am when my phone buzzes lightly. I turn it over and see that it’s a message from my daughter. She’s in Japan, or is it South Korea? Anyway, she’s been travelling on her gap year. The message says something about her flight back. <div><br /></div><div>Suddenly the thought of her on a plane, flying back to the UK reminds me of the birds (were they seagulls?) in the playground many years ago.
I remember looking up at them then and wondering at their freedom while I stood on the tarmac, pushing my daughter on a swing. And now, like them, she is free to fly wherever she wants. It seems like a moment of change, of shifting. Of reversal. Other things have changed too. I used to help her with new words, now she helps me (who knew O.G. meant original?); I used to push her in her buggy carefully past the many obstructions in the street, now she takes me gently by the elbow and guides me when I’m in danger of bumping into things. </div><div><br /></div><div>As I read her message I hope I’ve been an okay father. I hope I’ve given her the right amount of help to enable her to answer the questions that she will be asked in life, and is already being confronted by. It’s been sixteen years since my first post here and I can barely remember that scruffy, bearded man with a bag of books (oh, hang on…). But if I’m unrecognizable, you should see my daughter. I suppose the fact that she’ll be home soon, with stories to tell about the world, shows I might, perhaps, have done something right.</div>Stay at home dadhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07943310521217164291noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2309801433272440943.post-79456898392747460162012-03-29T10:30:00.001+01:002012-03-29T10:31:12.895+01:00Changing for GoodI have a new partner. At first my daughter wasn’t sure what to think about my newfound happiness. ‘She won’t want to go out with you,’ she told me suspiciously. ‘She’s younger than you.’ When it turned out she did want to go out with me, my daughter approached each new stage in our relationship with the same degree of scepticism. She was very uncertain that she’d want to stay over, then highly doubtful that she’d ever want to move in. <br />
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Nevertheless she was welcoming and generous-spirited as ever, and probably secretly quite relieved that it wasn’t going to be just her and me anymore. Although not everything’s changed - we often still sit around together in our pyjamas in front of the television, when we should probably be doing something more useful.<br />
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My new partner and I are getting married soon. When I told my daughter the news she was quiet for a while, but in the end she came and put her arms around me. And we’re going to have a baby too. I asked my daughter what she thought about having a brother or a sister and she said she wasn’t keen. ‘Why?’ I asked. ‘Because you might spend more time with them than me,’ she said, ‘and love them more.’ I told her that of course I wouldn’t love them any more than I love her. That there was plenty of love to go around in my world. And once again she flung her arms around my neck and hugged me tightly. <br />
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And as I hugged her back, feeling the comfort of having her in my arms as always, I realised that what I hadn’t told her was that I wouldn’t be having another baby if I hadn’t loved every single moment of having her as my daughter.Stay at home dadhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07943310521217164291noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2309801433272440943.post-84516681395047551012012-01-27T10:31:00.010+00:002012-01-28T15:16:41.186+00:00Animal MagicThere have been some more changes.<br /><br />We have a hamster now. Bubbles. My daughter had been asking for one for a while. I’d been saying no for a while. But in the end I gave in on her birthday. Since she doesn’t have a brother or sister I realised it would be a good thing for her to have a pet to care for. I smuggled a cage into the house in a rubbish bag, then wood shavings, feed, water bottle. Then Bubbles, the night before her birthday. <br /><br />The next day, when she’d unwrapped the cage and hugged me and said through the smiles that it was the best present she’d ever had, the questions started. <br /> ‘What does he eat?’ <br /> ‘A seed mix,’ I replied, pointing to an as-yet-unwrapped present. <br /> ‘How long will he live?’ <br /> ‘Oh, not that long,’ I told her out of a desire to soften the shock of his eventual death. ‘Just a couple of years probably.’ <br /> ‘Oh,’ she said, looking thoughtful. ‘And daddy...’ <br /> ‘Yes?’ <br /> ‘Where does he poo?’ <br /> I smiled. ‘In the cage. We’ll have to clean it out – <em>you’ll</em> have to clean it out.’<br /> She looked up at me, her nose wrinkled in disgust.<br /><br />It’s three months later and she does clean the cage now, wearing a clothes-peg on her nose to keep out the smell. <br /> We are at the breakfast table eating cornflakes and she’s telling me about a poem she has written at school. <br /> 'What would you say if you were writing a poem about Bubbles?' I ask. <br /> She thinks for a moment. ‘I’d say that every morning when I come downstairs and see him, my heart fills with happiness…’ she says, smiling, ‘… because he’s not dead yet.’ <br /> I choke on my spoonful of cornflakes and start laughing. <br /> ‘What daddy?’ she asks and I learn something more about the mind of a child.<em></em>Stay at home dadhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07943310521217164291noreply@blogger.com15tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2309801433272440943.post-29116109802700216782011-06-17T11:27:00.003+01:002011-06-17T11:34:56.999+01:00Up Up and AwayI am in the playground with my daughter. I stand watching while she climbs up the rope structure to the top before standing in the crow’s nest waving. Shielding my eyes against the sun I wave back with my other hand. <em>Very good </em>I mouth. I’m impressed. It’s a long way up and I know I’d be feeling a little sick up there and worrying about the journey back down.<br /><br />Journeys are like that; they can seem more frightening in advance than they end up being. I think of all the playgrounds I’ve watched my daughter play in; all the different versions of her. The toddler; the schoolgirl; and now the confident seven-year old with a lop-sided smile which can make me gulp. I’d never have been able to imagine it all that time ago. It would have seemed an impossibly long way away.<br /><br />My daughter nimbly climbs down and we walk home through the park, past a field where a hot-air balloon is taking off. We watch hand-in-hand in silence as the blower sends rasping gusts of hot air into the mouth of the canopy and it quivers and taughtens. When it is ready to leave, the ropes are released and the smiling customers rise slowly into the sky, waving, at whom I don’t know. We wave back until their faces are no longer visible. Until we’re waving at nothing.<br /><br />My daughter’s very excited and bounces up and down, saying how much she’d like to go for a balloon ride. I tell her I’m not so sure; it’s a long way up. ‘Ohhh,’ she says and I have that feeling that I’ve let her down. Like I do in those moments when she’s sad, just before she goes to sleep, when things can seem dark and difficult and she misses the people she loves.<br /><br />The moment of disappointment over, she grasps my hand and we head for home.Stay at home dadhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07943310521217164291noreply@blogger.com13tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2309801433272440943.post-87924445252277457832011-03-11T12:06:00.004+00:002011-03-28T12:15:55.901+01:00Moving OnSometimes things change little by little. Sometimes you turn around and everything is different. My daughter has two bedrooms now, in two houses. I tell her she is lucky, that it means more toys, more things to do, more excitement. But she wants one bedroom. She wants her mummy and daddy to be together.<br /><br />I am making dinner in the kitchen when I hear a noise near the front door and stop chopping, trying to listen above the music. There it is again: a shout, perhaps Saturday drinkers passing by. I go into the hallway to listen. As I get to the staircase I hear a voice coming through the letterbox shouting <em>I Love You Daddy</em>. The sound echoes in the space, then the letterbox rattles shut and I smile. <br /><br />By the time I get the door open my daughter has reached the corner of the street, but when I shout to her she turns and smiles at me. The familiar smile, stretching wide, turning her cheeks into two doughy balls. She runs back and hugs me, her mother watching in the background.<br /><br />I know I will see her next week, but all the same it is strange to see her like this. It is the time of day I used to make her tea. Now she’s somewhere else. Now I don’t even know what she’s doing. She runs upstairs and re-appears with a spotty dog from her bed. <em>I love you too</em>, I say. <em>Bye daddy</em>, she says as she disappears past me. Things used to be different. But different doesn’t have to mean better, I tell myself.Stay at home dadhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07943310521217164291noreply@blogger.com13tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2309801433272440943.post-84994033871412107502010-11-11T14:41:00.005+00:002010-11-12T09:59:48.920+00:00Running Away to the CircusThe circus has come to town. Me, I haven’t been since I was eight, and a fire-eating clown scared me half to death. It’s an event here though, and when I find discount ticket vouchers at the local café I ask my daughter if she’d like to go.<br /><br />‘Of course, daddy,’ she says, looking at me as if scarcely able to believe that my forty-odd years haven’t equipped me to come to such conclusions on my own. ‘It’s bunny’s birthday. It’ll be a special treat for her.’<br /><br />Saturday comes and my daughter arrives downstairs in the morning with bunny. <br /><br />‘How do you know it’s bunny’s birthday?’ I ask, as I pour her a bowl of some cereal which is more-or-less just a packet of sugar-lumps. <br /><br />‘It says on her bottom. Look,’ she says, tipping bunny up and showing me a label with a date of birth printed on it. <br /><br />‘Oh yes,’ I say. ‘She’s six, like you.’ <br />‘I’ve made her a card and a cake,’ my daughter says, rummaging in her book bag and pulling out a card with a picture of a cake on the front and a cardboard cake, which she stands next to it on the table. ‘Happy birthday,’ she says, hugging bunny. ‘I made you a card and we’re going to the circus later. I bet you’ve been looking forward to it for ages.’<br /><br />At the circus I buy my daughter some candyfloss and we sit inside the Big Top amid the smell of sweat and damp tarpaulins. My daughter finishes eating and puts bunny on her lap to enjoy the view. I’m half-scared to death again, this time by the gymnastics of the trapeze artists high up in the canopy. But as the show goes on I begin to enjoy it.<br /><br />At the end we walk out and I ask my daughter what she thought of it all.<br /><br />‘Good,’ she says, as she does when I pick her up after school. <br />‘Oh,’ I say, disappointed.<br />‘Don’t worry daddy, bunny liked it. That's what's important.’<br /><br />I smile and put my hand on my daughter's head, wondering when I’ll ever go to the circus again.Stay at home dadhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07943310521217164291noreply@blogger.com15tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2309801433272440943.post-31177595446836074312010-09-09T14:15:00.006+01:002010-09-17T16:37:22.913+01:00The Way Things AreIt is over a year since I wrote here about my daughter. How has she changed? I ask myself. Her legs are longer, her hair darker, her shoe-size 13 ½; to my mind she looks like a teenager. <br /><br />We’re having a cup of tea. She drinks tea now, with two sugars. I knock my cup against the table, spilling some of it onto the carpet.<br /><br />‘Don’t worry daddy, just use Vanish,’ my daughter says. 'It washes four times whiter. Just sprinkle it on and the carpet will be fragrant.’<br /><br />She watches adverts featuring attractive mums with shiny, white smiles now. I laugh and think how much she's changed.<br /><br />‘Do you remember when we used to go to the Model Village and Bunny World ?’ I ask her.<br />‘Yes daddy, of course.’ <br />‘Your favourite thing at the Model Village was the chocolate,’ I say, smiling at the thought.<br />‘Chocolate? It still is,’ she says, looking surprised.<br />I smile and ask her 'What are you writing ?’ <br /><br />She shows me a Barbie print-out on which she’s written in pink felt-tip:<br /><br /><em>My Fashion Tips: if you are going out then where a dress. If you want boys to love you where pretty things. Skirts are realy fashionable this summer try one on!</em><br /><br />‘That’s good,’ I tell her. <br />Maybe it's something in my expression, maybe something within her that makes her say ‘Don’t worry daddy, <em>I</em> don’t want boys to love me.’Stay at home dadhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07943310521217164291noreply@blogger.com25tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2309801433272440943.post-83843423143057198582009-06-03T11:42:00.006+01:002009-06-03T14:50:39.813+01:00Love letters“Daddy” says my daughter, coming up behind the sofa and leaning over towards me. “Can I have a piece of paper please?”<br /><br />I give her a sheet and she goes away to her room.<br /><br />A little later she re-appears and hands the paper back saying “Look, I’ve done this for my friend.”<br /><br />I take it and find in amazement that it is filled with writing. Something strange has happened recently: my daughter now reads to me the books I used to read to her. She trips through the words using the same intonations I used to. And then there’s the writing. Some of the words are familiar, others not. But it’s undeniably writing.<br /><br />It says:<br /><br /><em>I’ve got 46 stickers I countid them on Tuesday 2009 17th the 17.03.09 March. Yor my best frend. I hoap you have a sooper holoday and Il tri and get my mummy to have a play date<br /><br />Love from Xxxxx</em><br /><br />I congratulate her on her efforts. She smiles broadly back, but suddenly I don’t see the straight-backed girl with fraying pigtails and biscuity mouth in front of me. Instead I see the baby I fed with milk from a tiny bottle and rocked to sleep in an attic bedroom five years earlier. I can’t remember any of the countless tiny moments in between and I can’t begin to understand how the change has happened.Stay at home dadhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07943310521217164291noreply@blogger.com25tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2309801433272440943.post-39238620447832400292009-03-18T17:10:00.002+00:002009-03-18T17:22:02.490+00:00Reality TV #2It’s dark outside; inside the windows are laced with moisture and the radiators are groaning with the effort of heating the space around them. I am sitting on the sofa with my computer on my lap. Although I no longer go to an office I still have to get up early to work. Sometimes when I tiptoe downstairs a floorboard creaks and my daughter squeaks and half-awakes from dreams of princesses and monsters. <br /><br />Between key-taps I watch a man and a woman in the glow of the television. Like me, they are sitting on a sofa. They repeat smiling interviews with uncomfortable guests over the course of the morning. The talk is of strikes, economic crisis, <em>financial bail-outs</em>. Then there is a feature about shoppers, then a weather forecaster standing in a snowy garden. <br /><br />My daughter comes downstairs and heads over to where I’m sitting. I say hello and she sits down against the arm of the sofa with her thumb in her mouth. I switch over to a children’s channel and bright cartoon figures jump from the screen.<br /><br />I am poring over my computer, tapping and flicking my eyeline up towards the screen every so often to see what I’ve written. I change a spelling here and there, red lines underscore words the computer doesn’t understand. My daughter narrates the plot of the programme she is watching but I am only half-paying attention, grumpily grunting as I scour the financial world for interest. The figures at the bottom of my screen tell me my deadline is fast approaching. Suddenly my daughter’s voice drops and I look up.<br /><br />“Daddy… you’re not even <em>listening</em> to me.” She reproaches me tearfully.<br /><br />I look at her, my fingers poised over the keyboard, images of financial ruin on the computer screen. And I realise, suddenly, that it’s not important. The world my daughter lives in: the cartoons, the good-natured babble – that’s the important one.<br /><br />I lean over, give her a kiss and put my arm around her.<br /><br />“Ok” I say, looking at the television “Tell me what’s happening”.Stay at home dadhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07943310521217164291noreply@blogger.com16tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2309801433272440943.post-60598277875224809592008-11-28T09:54:00.002+00:002008-11-28T12:21:56.597+00:00Reality TVI am sitting under the comforting low-light of a table-lamp, while in the corner of the room the television sparkles. My daughter is sitting tight against the sofa-arm, knees drawn up to her chest, thumb in mouth. Her eyes are fixed to the screen as a dancer sweeps from corner to corner in perfect princess circles. I am next to her, arm around her shoulders, also lost in TV half-life. Brucie smiles in the LCD brightness, performing with comforting, barely-remembered ease. My daughter reaches her hand towards me. “Daddy, I like holding hands with you.” she says. I smile and squeeze her fingers tightly.<br /><br />“Daddy?”<br /><br />“Yes?”<br /><br />“I wish Bruce was your daddy and then he could come and make jokes and we could all laugh.”<br /><br />“Me too” I say, smiling again. I can’t begin to know how to reply to her sometimes. She’d like me to have a father and she’s a little disturbed that I no longer have one. If I think hard I can remember life in flannel pyjamas too. Small things are big, big things don’t exist and everything is simple.<br /><br />“Daddy…” she says <br /><br />“Yes?” <br /><br />“Maybe you can ask for Christmas.”Stay at home dadhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07943310521217164291noreply@blogger.com32tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2309801433272440943.post-19637479692026616662008-06-28T18:24:00.001+01:002008-06-28T18:37:42.736+01:00Space and TimeThe seagulls followed us home. I watch in the playground as they skid overhead yelping and flapping. Then they are gone. I wonder why they were here, where they are going.<br /><br />My daughter slams into me and hugs my legs, her face pressed sideways and arms spread wide. I try to enjoy these moments. I know you must. But still time leaches through me. As I hug her in return I can feel it escaping between my arms. <br /><br />I have a new feeling now, in the playground. I stand watching my daughter as she jumps up and down climbing frames, remembering the early faltering steps, the clutching at the handrail, the worried looks back. Then I would loiter nearby, ready to catch her if she fell, now I hardly need to pay attention.<br /><br />My daughter sees me looking upwards and follows my gaze.<br /><br />“Can birds touch the sky daddy?”<br /><br />Her questions have become more tricky. She throws queries out and expects a neatly packaged response. It takes more knowledge than I have to do it properly. People write books on these sorts of things. I tell her something about air and wings. <br /><br />“Oh.” she says, seriously. Then her little lop-sided smile returns. “Pretend I’m a fairy, daddy.”<br /><br />I pretend and she whirls around the playground in her fairy world. A little girl about eighteen months old stands watching her in fascination, the way my daughter used to look at the older girls. My daughter skips around her, stops, smiles and moves on. When we leave the playground I say to her <br /><br />“That little girl is the same age as you were when I started looking after you. What do you think about that?”<br /><br />“Hmm” she says. “Can I have an ice cream?”Stay at home dadhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07943310521217164291noreply@blogger.com49tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2309801433272440943.post-38224034663799965872008-04-30T10:43:00.004+01:002008-04-30T13:39:18.098+01:00Devon DreamsI am standing with my daughter on <a href="http://www.devon-online.com/towns/croydebay/croydebay.html">Baggy Point</a> in the thin sunshine which comes after a squall. I grip her hand more tightly than usual as we look into the frothing water below, where the rock has fallen away from the cliff in dense slices. Gulls wheel and mewl and flap against the sheer edge. The scale is so unfamiliar it is hard to get into perspective. I gaze into the distance towards other land masses over silent seas. I remember when it was my hand that was held firmly and I felt and saw for the first time. Memories haunt me. It’s so long ago and I don’t know how that's happened. So suddenly. And now here I am, creating ghosts for my daughter.<br /><br />She looks across the grassy space to the bay and gets out her little binoculars. She peers intently into them and squeals “Everything is so <i>close</i>!” and giggles. Squeal, giggle squeal, giggle. Looking towards where the boats are moored she says “Daddy…”<br /><br />“Yes?”<br /><br />“Are those buoys or girls?”<br /><br />I start to explain but I can’t make her understand the spellings and the pronunciation and anyway it doesn’t matter. “Buoys.” I say. “They’re all buoys.”<br /><br />She thinks for a moment and then says. “What do you do if you want to have a cup of tea on a boat?” <br /><br />“Well, some of them have tiny kitchens.” I reply.<br /><br />“Are they as small as an ant?” <br /><br />I smile. Perspective is a difficult thing up here in this strange rocky world. As the wind gets up I suggest we go and get some hot chocolate. My daughter’s eyes sparkle and a memory starts to form.Stay at home dadhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07943310521217164291noreply@blogger.com49tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2309801433272440943.post-49522344370154691042008-03-24T15:31:00.002+00:002008-03-24T19:42:28.615+00:00MovingI am surrounded by packing boxes. They spill their contents like urban rubbish bins. We filled them up in one life and now we’re unpacking them in a different one. Without the packing cases I’d move on more easily. It’s really only all this <em>stuff</em> that attaches us to the past. I have driven along our old road and looked at the houses where the people opposite live. People whose lives I have known, although I have not known them; who no doubt casually observed ours too. They’re usually not at home when I pass by. I wonder what they think of the change that has happened opposite them. Do they think about it at all? Have they noticed?<br /><br />I see a little bit of grey material underneath the top layer of one of the boxes and give it a tug. Up it comes from the depths as though a lucky dip win. It is my daughter’s old coat, a little crumpled, very small. The label says age 2. Three buttons are aligned each side of its double-breasted front. On each the smiley face on a luminous sticker grins out. Already I have difficulty remembering where they came from. I think they were given out each time we went to a little toddlers' art group. Placed there perfunctorily by the kind lady who ran it, but well-loved by my daughter. Now I remember. A different time. A different place. I suddenly feel a keen sense of change; of loss. But of course we haven’t lost anything. Just time. I want to wrap my daughter up in her little coat and transport us back to those days, simply because we can never return. <br /><br />My daughter wanders into the room and comes towards me. “What are you doing daddy?” she asks.<br /><br />“Just unpacking” I say. <br /><br />“That’s my coat!” she exclaims “Oh! Look at all the little faces.”<br /><br />I smile.<br /><br />“Daddy...” She says. “Do you think the little boys and girls in my old school miss me?”<br /><br />“I’m sure they do” I tell her supportively. “Do you miss them?”<br /><br />“Uh, well, not really” she says. “I like my new friends more.”<br /><br />I smile again and put my arm around her shoulders. Then I fold up the coat and put it into the bottom of a drawer.Stay at home dadhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07943310521217164291noreply@blogger.com38tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2309801433272440943.post-89326443880385595282008-01-04T11:10:00.000+00:002008-01-04T20:01:01.378+00:00Christmas SpiritI am upstairs tapping at the computer. My daughter is nearby, sitting on the carpet. She has collected a number of her toys and dolls around her and is gesticulating and talking in a hushed voice. I turn my head slightly and listen as she leans close to one of the dolls. She is talking to her about bedtimes and eating tea and being good. She strokes a dress here and pats some hair into place there. I can just hear what she is saying but not every word. I love to watch her caring for all her little inanimate toys. <br /><br />“Who are they?” I ask, pointing to some dolls near her.<br /><br />“They are my children.”<br /><br />“And those too?” <br /><br />“No, those two are having a playdate” she says. “They’re both boys. That one’s a bit older though, because he was born on Christmas Day.” <br /><br />“Oh, like Jesus?” I ask.<br /><br />“No daddy” she says, smiling indulgently. “He’s called Tom.”<br /><br />She tucks them up under a little blanket. They look loved and cared for and somehow happier than usual. I thought my daughter had an imaginary sister. In fact she has a whole extended family.Stay at home dadhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07943310521217164291noreply@blogger.com53tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2309801433272440943.post-52639580748794190112007-11-22T18:16:00.000+00:002007-11-22T18:29:00.715+00:00Giving ThanksI am waiting outside the school gates for my daughter. Four wheel drives hug the pavement, mothers chat and laugh. I have perfected my timing so that I arrive as the children come out, so that I don't need to stand around uncomfortably, not being talked to.<br /><br />My daughter emerges wearing a cardboard hat, with something dangling from the front. Like one of those American joke caps with the hand and the hammer. It turns out I'm not far wrong. It’s Thanksgiving, my daughter informs me (I would never have known) and they have been constructing headwear all day, with the help of some American mums. It’s a magnificent effort, boasting a spring-loaded turkey head at the front and multi-coloured feather-tail arrangement behind. We set off for home on the Tube and people smile, elderly ladies come up and exchange a few words with my daughter at every opportunity. I seem to have a lot in common with elderly ladies nowadays.<br /><br />As we enter the Tube my daughter asks what I’ve got for her to eat. I usually give her a little chocolate for the trip home. When I tell her it’s a chocolate fish she suddenly jumps up and down, her hat waving around like a gobbling turkey. <br />“I don't want a fish.” she shouts. “I want a lolly.” <br />I tell her she won’t get anything at all if she doesn’t behave herself, which sends her into an even worse tantrum. She jumps up and down on the platform, snot spraying around her face like a New York fire hydrant. <br />“Right, that’s it, you're not getting anything” I tell her.<br /><br />She is now too upset to do anything. We sit down and wait for the train. I am stony-faced, she whimpers like a small dog. But I stay firm. We don't talk. <br /><br />I get her home with a firm grip and the odd command. When we arrive I suggest an apology is in order. <br />“Sorry daddy.” She says. Then she adds “I want to say something else daddy. It’s not sorry.” <br />“What is it?” I ask. <br />“I want to say thank you” she replies.<br />“For what?” <br />“For making my food and giving me a bath” she says. <br /><br />It’s little short of a miracle I think to myself. I ask her why she thought of telling me that. <br />“I didn't” she says. “My teacher told me to. It’s Thanksgiving. I told you.”Stay at home dadhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07943310521217164291noreply@blogger.com62tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2309801433272440943.post-15916122545214064912007-11-12T09:44:00.000+00:002007-11-12T09:50:24.561+00:00Running AwayWe have run away from nursery school for a few days. It’s the week after half-term and at <a href="http://www.forestry.gov.uk/westonbirt">Westonbirt Arboretum</a> the leaves are a delicate palette of yellows, ochres and browns. An insistent breeze is blowing them in a stream of whirls and spirals. My daughter runs from leaf-fall to leaf-fall with her arms outstretched trying to catch them as they jag around her open palms. She laughs and spins round on the spot, and the elderly people watching her laugh too. <br /><br />When the wind dies, she stands beneath a huge oak and bends back her head to look right to the top. She blows to dislodge the leaves, puffing out her reddening cheeks and putting all her force into her breaths. Disappointed at the effect she puts her hands on her hips and looks at the tree accusingly. <br /><br />Going from tree to tree she picks at the ground like a magpie, making a collection of leaves, pinecones, acorns. “Here are some things to put in your study” she says to me. “You can look at them and they can remind you of autumn, and you don’t throw them away. Ever.”<br /><br />I put them in my pocket and stoop down and kiss her hair, which smells a little of baby, a little of shampoo, a little of <i>her</i>.<br /><br />“Thank you. I will” I say, putting the handful in my pocket.<br /><br />A few days later, when I am at home again I put my hand in my coat pocket and feel the dry bundle beneath my fingers. I pull it out and discover the leaves have been fired in crisp shades of brown and red.<br /><br />I put them on my desk and I do look at them. And I won’t throw them away. Ever.Stay at home dadhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07943310521217164291noreply@blogger.com40tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2309801433272440943.post-13240272378693726752007-10-18T12:20:00.000+01:002007-10-18T16:16:25.989+01:00Injury TimeI am at work. My half day a week in an office. Young people, older bosses, a pregnant woman I see and imagine the weeks, months, years ahead. I talk to her occasionally: she spends a lot of time waiting for lifts and coming and going and leaning and puffing out her cheeks. I don’t want to tell her too much of course, so I just tell her my wife was the same. She wouldn’t know I had a child if I didn’t tell her that. The office is one of the few places I have no link to childcare. I am not a stay at home dad there. <br /><br />I sit at a computer, clicking buttons, looking at newspapers, listening to the things the young people (really young, scarcely in their twenties) say to each other. It brings back memories. I don’t know what they think of the bearded, long-haired man who passes among them for a few hours a week. (Thank you to Sebastien Chabal, by the way, for making the image respectable, attractive even.) I sometimes rejoice in the lack of expectation, the lack of interest; sometimes I want to stand up and shout “I used to work on trading floors, wear suits, transact deals, shout into telephones, entertain in restaurants. I used to be someone <i>else…</i>” <br /><br />My mobile phone rings. It’s my daughter’s school. She has fallen over and has “a small hole” in her head. I finish my work at ten times the usual speed (I’d like to know how to do that) and head for the nearby hospital. On the roads, nobody seems to understand I’m in a rush and cars loiter and arc lazily. When I arrive finally, she is sitting on her teacher’s lap, draped in a blanket as they wait to be seen. She seems dazed. I hug her and take a look at the cut. It looks as though she has been caught by a stray stud in a ruck. Her teacher tells me how loud the thump was when her head hit the floor, which is not something I really want to recap. <br /><br />I take over and after a while we see the doctor, who refers us to a nurse, who glues her head back together. The hairwash holiday she will be having brings a watery smile to her lips. “I didn’t cry.” she tells me. I ask why not. “I wanted the doctor to say I was very brave.” she replies. I stroke the left side of her head. “It’s alright to cry.” I tell her.Stay at home dadhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07943310521217164291noreply@blogger.com58tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2309801433272440943.post-32367958709907862522007-09-27T13:52:00.000+01:002007-09-27T18:14:22.434+01:00ImaginingsMy daughter has an imaginary sister called Charlotte. She comes and goes, but she is always <i>there</i>. Much like a real sister I suppose. She generally arrives when other people are talking about their own siblings. Along with another hairline crack in my heart.<br /><br />This is what it is like to fail your child. To <i>feel</i> you have failed them, anyway. The sense parents have when their child falls downstairs behind a turned back, or is bullied by faceless tormentors at school. It is a melancholic stab, a powerless ache accompanied by the throb of guilt. To begin with I tried not to mention Charlotte, for fear of encouraging the fantasy. But recently, since she (both of them) are a bit older and wiser, I decided to ask for a bit of information about her. She lives with her mummy and daddy - she has different parents - a little way away and is older than my daughter. She helps out when my daughter is feeling lonely or out-siblinged, which really amounts to the same thing.<br /><br />I think I suggested that she wasn’t a real sister at some point. “No, I know she’s not real” my daughter replied and cuddled closer on the sofa.<br /><br />When it is time for bed, I ask her to take her clothes off herself and then put on her pyjamas. “Hmmph. I can’t do <i>everything</i> daddy”, she says.<br /><br />That’s true. Sometimes you need a little help from someone nearby, and sometimes, perhaps, you need a little bit more than that.<br /><br />“Will you do some computering daddy, before you go downstairs?”, she says, when it’s time to go to sleep. “I want you to look after me.”<br /><br />I kiss her cheek and she whirls around onto her side, flinging an arm casually around my neck.<br /><br />I go next door, amused that the mouse-clicking made by writing about her, is a comfort to her. One day when she is too old for mouse-clicking, the words might be a comfort to her too, I hope.Stay at home dadhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07943310521217164291noreply@blogger.com56tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2309801433272440943.post-23299366431640206422007-09-11T20:23:00.000+01:002007-09-13T17:08:04.286+01:00The Princess and the PalaceOne sunny afternoon after nursery I take my daughter to Kensington Palace. We drive past it every day in the car and I have seen the bouquets through the trees. A decade ago I went to have a look at the reef of flowers circling the palace and took a swim in the sadness. Before marriage, before children. I could have stayed forever surrounded by such melancholy.<br /><br />I had asked my daughter if she wanted to see the Princess’s Palace. She shot back her “yes” so fast that it made me smile. What could interest her more than a trip to a princess’s palace? “Which princess?” she asked. “The princess who died ten years ago. I replied. “What happened?” “She died in a car crash.” I said. “I think it’s right to tell the truth about these things. You can’t go wrong telling the truth. It’s when you <i>don’t</i> that the trouble starts. I have no problem telling my daughter about death. There’s only one I couldn't tell her about. And that’s probably just because I can’t yet face the chronology of life myself.<br /><br />The sun bears down on us as we park near to the park gate and walk in. It <i>is</i> a little like approaching a palace. All paths lead there. It looms as you walk among the trees. We stand looking at the pictures and the flowers for a while and are then drawn through the open gates.<br /><br />“So the princess died and everyone put flowers on the railings so they could get happy again?” my daughter asks. “Yes” I say. I find she often puts things better than I can.<br /><br />I cheat, taking her to the shop rather than paying the money to go on the tour. She is fascinated by the jewellery on offer, the pictures of the princess in her tiaras. We argue when I won’t buy her a princess doll. It’s a rule I have not to buy something at every place we go to.<br /><br />I think she is a bit disappointed overall; expected something more. Certainly a toy. Once she has got over her sulk she asks “Did the princess have a fairy godmother?”<br /><br />“I don’t think so” I say, “Not a fairy one anyway”.<br /><br />She looks dispirited for a moment and then brightens and runs off into the shade of the trees.Stay at home dadhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07943310521217164291noreply@blogger.com49tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2309801433272440943.post-25309177846568290422007-08-28T10:35:00.000+01:002007-08-28T20:07:36.490+01:00Real Life<i>Once upon a time, there was a king and a queen. They lived in a castle in a kingdom in a land far away. One day they decided to have a child and sure enough the queen soon had a little baby princess and everyone was very happy. And they called the princess Princess Pink</i><br /><br />We are enjoying the last days of the holidays, without papers and television news updates, in the watery heat of the summer’s end. I look out from my favourite vantage point above the back garden. My wife is reading at the green metal table, while my daughter plays next to her in the paddling pool, sunlight flickering on its silvery surface. The hosepipe lies nearby. Earlier I had pointed out a rainbow in the fine spray, sliding into the flowerbed. “Look, there it is! Can you see it?” “In real life is there a rainbow?” my daughter asked. She is very keen to work out what is real and what is not nowadays. “Yes, in real life I said. “Oh yes! I see it!” she replied, beaming.<br /><br /><i>But soon the queen became ill and the king was sad and all the subjects were sad too. The finest physicians in the land tried to find a cure but they couldn’t. So the king took care of Princess Pink. And in return she slept in a little basket next to him every night and kept the sadness away.</i><br /><br />I’m not near enough to smell the sun lotion, but I can sense it. The splashing and the singing and the giggling I can hear. I look at her playing and I can see she’s happy, or at least not unhappy. But I worry she’ll not be as happy later, on her own. It doesn’t matter now, of course. To everyone else it might seem that a brother or sister could come along. Many of her friends have them already. But it is unlikely to happen. I know that. And I hope she won’t mind. I’ll explain one day and I know she’ll understand. As for me, later on in the day she makes me happier than she could ever know. Just by lying there asleep against me, story books scattered on the floor, her light breathing matching mine.<br /><br /><i>In the end, a clever wizard came to the kingdom and he found the cure for the queen. She returned to live with the king and Princess Pink in their castle and got better over the years until she was the same old happy queen. But the king never forgot what Princess Pink did for him and he always tried to keep the sadness away for her too.</i>Stay at home dadhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07943310521217164291noreply@blogger.com58tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2309801433272440943.post-66842024819531911952007-08-13T10:12:00.000+01:002007-08-13T10:19:53.839+01:00HappySadIt’s bedtime, in fact past bedtime, as usual, and my daughter lies in her little bed beneath her little duvet with little fairies embroidered on it. I have kissed her good night and moved next door to the room with the computer. There is a bit of rustling and then I hear her voice, clear and steady.<br /><br /><i>If you’re happy and you know it clap your hands! </i> <br /><br />Slowly, then quickly …<br /><br /><i>If you’re happy and you know it, andyoureallywanttoshowit,ifyou’rehappyandyouknowitclapyourhands! </i> <br /><br />Verse after verse of clapping hands, stamping feet, being happy.<br /><br />Does it mean she’s happy? I think so. I’d <i>like</i> to think so. Does she know what happiness is? Do any of us? Is feeling loved happiness? Knowing someone else you love feels loved? I know that I am happy, listening to her at that moment.<br /><br />Did the sad boy in the photo sing contentedly to himself as he fell asleep at night? I hope he did, at one time. I asked my mother who he was and she said she thought he was her half-brother. You can imagine he might have been a little sad, if you know the story. You can imagine <i>she</i> might have been sad if you know the story. Her father, one moment here, the next on a different continent. Then with a different family. There was a lot of sadness around, in those days. You were lucky if you weren’t gripped by it. You took happiness where you could find it; in small things, in minor, everyday, joys. <br /><br />The singing has tailed off into thumb-sucking. A couple of moments later I peer through the doorway and her thumb has slipped from her lips. Her head is in profile, as if in silent communication with the gaggle of soft toys. The pillow is splashed by her milky-coffee curls. She looks content, serene; asleep in her little, happy, world.Stay at home dadhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07943310521217164291noreply@blogger.com61tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2309801433272440943.post-9285078029193027622007-08-03T10:40:00.000+01:002007-08-03T10:41:34.998+01:00Family GoldA few years ago my great aunt gave me a little black and white photograph, in a mottled brass frame. It shows a boy in dungarees, about three or four years old, standing with his hands to his face, looking contemplative and a little sad and lonely. Yes, that’s me, I thought when she handed it over. I wondered where and when it was taken and treasured this little link to my past. A few years later my mother told me that it wasn’t in fact me, but a relation. “I didn’t want to tell you before” she said, and seeing that I looked downcast “I thought you might be a little upset”. That’s how secrets start, I thought. But in fact it’s a bit of a relief. There’s something about the child all alone with that worried look. I wonder what happened to him and if he still has that expression.<br /><br />My great aunt was Polish and lived in a creaky house in Fulham, long after her husband, an artist who had survived time in a gulag, had died. I used to stay there from time to time when I was between flats. In a little self-contained apartment downstairs that had a 1960s kitchen with formica cabinets, a fridge that smelled of fridge and a cooker with a grill pan that slotted in at the top. I would go upstairs to eat with her and sit in her own little kitchen while she told me about her past and how much I looked like her brother. She was in her seventies then but she seemed much younger, and we chatted like friends. She would offer me gin and tonic in a grimy glass and cheese straws from a big square tin that were probably as old as their container. I would wander around the studio containing all my great uncle’s paintings, creaking across the shiny parquet floor and leaning down to look at the sun-faded spines of his old books, layered on shelves. <br /><br />Eventually she became ill and moved somewhere she could be looked after. The house was sold and is probably a banker’s palace now, with slate bathrooms and recessed lighting. Although she died before my daughter was born, shortly before her death she gave me the gold coin she had brought with her when she first came to this country as a refugee. It was her emergency money, and she had carried it deep in her clothing. She told me it was for my daughter. Wrapped in a little cloth it still shines warmly, the eagle gazing out imperiously and proudly.Stay at home dadhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07943310521217164291noreply@blogger.com46tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2309801433272440943.post-26399261461605039422007-07-27T13:12:00.000+01:002007-07-27T13:21:51.316+01:00Sammy ShrimpIt’s an old-fashioned holiday: cloudless skies, constant, lazy, heat, while at home the skies are crumbling into huge slabs of rain.<br /><br />We are sitting next to an umbrella by the pool, my daughter and I. My wife is inside the villa, sleeping perhaps, or doing something unremarkable. It’s easy when you’re away for little things to expand to fill great chunks of holiday time. It is all perfect, apart from the road the other side of the hedge, but I don’t mind that as much as my wife or our friends do. We have just emerged from the shiny coolness of the water and I lie steaming in the sun with my head and shoulders propped up, while my daughter sits in the shade with her knees drawn to her chin, wrapped in a towel. I put my hand absent-mindedly on her head and feel the warmth below my palm. She smiles and puts her hand on mine. Just her and me under the umbrella. Stillness around us. The breeze and the rustle of palm leaves. I am in my own world of heat and memories and she is in her own. But our worlds overlap. Is that what makes for a happy childhood I wonder? Not <i>too</i> much togetherness, not <i>too</i> much separation.<br /><br />In the evening we go to dinner in the old town. We find a restaurant on the beach, where the children can run on the sand while we sample a range of wines of different hues. The giant prawns are the hit of the night. Not least with my daughter who wraps a discarded head in a napkin and christens it Sammy Shrimp. Sammy accompanies her everywhere for the rest of the evening. She looks at him adoringly. And I think he feels the same about her too. <br /><br />On the way home in the taxi I am vaguely wondering what the pungent smell is and realise it is Sammy. I remove him from my sleeping daughter’s grasp and when we arrive home I toss him in the bin.<br /><br />The next morning my daughter wakes up and asks simultaneously “Where’s Sammy Shrimp?”<br />“Er, he’s gone to back to see all his other shrimp friends” I say.<br />She looks crestfallen.<br />“But I love him.” She says, lips quivering and tears squeezing their way out.<br />We hug her and reassure her, as if a beloved pet has had to be put down.<br />She soon recovers but I fervently hope she doesn’t decide to look inside the rubbish bin.Stay at home dadhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07943310521217164291noreply@blogger.com43tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2309801433272440943.post-16374896479978800372007-07-11T20:10:00.000+01:002007-07-11T20:13:09.436+01:00Theatre LandWe go to a friend’s for dinner on Friday night. The next day, early, it’s my daughter’s end of term performance. My wife and I spend so long reminding each other not to drink too much that we end up drinking all night. Consequently we are both slightly dazed on Saturday morning. In the car on the way there my daughter suddenly breaks into our conversation to say “I’m a bit nervous”. We both hesitate. We tell her she’ll be fine. We tell her <i>not</i> to be nervous. We tell her everybody gets nervous. As ever we tell her a lot of stuff. She considers our advice for a few seconds and it seems to do the trick. <br /><br />At the theatre, cars are double and treble parked and everyone is smarter than me. I’ve selected a t-shirt with a surfing motif and my usual jeans and trainers. While my daughter shakes the head’s hand enthusiastically I cringe a little and try to move through the door as rapidly as possible. I hate school. Even someone else’s. I recently remembered how I used to tick the days off, literally, when I was young. I still have the school diaries with neat little biro marks. When I left school I started to tick less, but then I started working and the ticking started again in earnest, accompanied by new little sums, indicating how much time I needed to continue before I could stop. As I worked longer the sums got more complex, until seventeen years after starting work and thirty five years after starting school I finally started out on my own.<br /><br />We say hello to a few people. It makes me feel ill seeing all these weektime people at the weekend in chinos and jackets. I meet the Japanese expat’s husband, who shakes my hand formally. He seems to be wearing a suit made entirely from chino. To fit in, I suppose. I look at his wife smiling uncertainly and wish I was somewhere else. I remember a story she told me at the farm park. She said she wasn’t looking forward to going back to Tokyo in a year’s time. I asked her why. “Because here my husband comes home from work at 10pm.” Perhaps she doesn’t like her husband, I thought. Seeing my confusion she added “In Japan he sleeps in the office. On a couch. He doesn’t come home during the week.” I look at her husband and wonder whether I dislike him or feel sorry for him.<br /><br />The curtain goes up. We are sitting way up near the back, where I like it. But I realize now that we can’t see my daughter. And she can’t see us either. The little row of children, of whom my daughter is one, scan the audience desperately trying to locate their parents. We wave but we’re too far away. The spotlight is on them. For a moment I think my daughter is going to struggle to her feet and burst into tears. And perhaps stick her finger up her nostril for good measure too. But she doesn’t. She calmly takes the hand of the girl next to her, mutters something soothing to her and they all clamber to their feet like 50 stone men, the way the young do. There is a pause for the music to start, then they execute a word perfect rendition of their song. Flashes burst around us. A thousand different versions play on LCD screens. I was prepared to be proud of a nose-picker, but what I’ve just seen makes me even more proud.Stay at home dadhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07943310521217164291noreply@blogger.com52tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2309801433272440943.post-63682245291988450552007-07-06T11:41:00.000+01:002007-07-06T11:57:42.093+01:00Play ActingMy daughter has been rehearsing at home for the end of term play. <br /><br />“Together we will garden! Together we will garden!” she sings, whirling her arms around introductorily. <br />“Dig the soyul! Dig the soyul!” she continues, swooping expansively with an imaginary spade. <br />“All day long…” She collapses to the floor, dragging the back of her hand across her brow.<br /><br />I clap supportively, but am interrupted by more verses about stones and weeds.<br /><br />Based on her last effort, at Christmas, I don’t hold out much hope for the actual performance. She spent the majority of the Nativity with her finger up her nose, sniffling unhappily while her classmates belted out the festive numbers.<br /><br />Coming back from nursery I lean across to strap her into her seat. She grabs the seatbelt and says “No, <i>I’ll</i> do it.” She says this a lot nowadays. She marches into the loo and closes the door, behind her. “<i>I</i> can do it!”. She wants to prepare her own meals. “No daddy, <i>I’ll</i> do it.” What happened to the dribbling incompetent who needed everything to be done for her? That’s over already. That's me, soon. <br /><br />From the back of the car my daughter tells me about the dress rehearsal at school. “There are curtains, but you can’t open them with your hands.” “Mmm, difficult” I say, distracted by suicidal tourists on Gloucester Road. It’s like Beachy Head around there. They step off the kerb and rely on me to save them. I think they must have notes in their pockets explaining to their families why they came to a busy street in central London to end it all.<br /><br />“Yes it’s tricky daddy.”<br />“I’m sure."<br />"Daddy."<br />"Yes?"<br />“XXXX <i>hurts my feelings</i>”<br />“What” I ask, peering into the rear view mirror.<br />“She says I’m naughty, but I’m not naughty”<br />I came across this girl at the farm park. She is naughty. Whatever she is told to do she does the opposite.<br />“No, you’re a good girl.”<br />“But she’s still my friend. The children at school are all my friends. All the children in the world are my friends. Even when they’re naughty. Even XXXX is my friend.”<br />I feel like stopping the car, unstrapping my daughter and hugging her tightly there on the pavement, among the pigeons and the dog poo and the suicidal tourists. Instead I mutter reassuringly and pull away from the lights.Stay at home dadhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07943310521217164291noreply@blogger.com28