Dude of a dad
I’m in the kitchen. Upstairs there are three people: my 13-year-old son, my partner and our new baby. I’ve tried waking Isaac, the 13 year old. I’ve switched on the light. I’ve rustled an old lampshade that’s sitting in his waste-paper basket. I’ve pressed an old teddy into his neck. I’ve dangled a belt onto his nose. My partner, Emma, is asleep and I haven’t tried to wake her up. And there’s Elsie, our baby, who has staggered and amazed me for many reasons but one utterly incredible reason above all others. She sleeps.
I’ve been involved in the upbringing of five children before Elsie appeared. It’s a complicated story of children that share my genes and others who don’t. And even the number five is complicated by the blunt and awful event that one of them died. Two years ago, my son Eddie, then nearly 19, died of meningitis. And as my mind tries to twist and turn around what being a parent and a father means, Eddie always stands there making the point that it’s not just a matter of being good or kind or doing the right thing.
(One moment, while I try to rouse my 13 year old. Incidentally, he’s 14 in a couple of days' time. Any suggestions for a birthday present? He’s booked me in to take him out to lunch at the local Vietnamese restaurant. And he says he wants a ticket for the hip-hop rave at Hackney Marshes later in the year.)
I forgot to say that there’s Joe, my 24 year old, still asleep in the converted stable at the end of the garden. When he was born I didn’t know babies. I didn’t know how they sleep, how they eat, what they do with their eyes, how they breathe – nothing at all. Well, for years I had known that I would never be a father. I had carefully analysed the fact that I was too irresponsible, too selfish, too obsessed with thinking about other things. I was absolutely not father material. Six children later, maybe I’ve learned something.
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