Dad's Net - On a milestone in Fatherhood

A couple of weeks ago I delivered the second of my twin sons up to his university and at one fell swoop my wife and I were plunged into 'Empty Nest' syndrome. Even though I have been the main child rearer over those 18 years, the prospect didn't fill me with trepidation, since I have plenty of writing projects to occupy my time. In fact I was looking forward to getting my life back, or at least the great chunks of time perviously devoted to homework, cooking and shopping for them, helping organising themselves, teaching shaving and cooking, running their youth football team, general chaperoning and accompanying and of course those chats on life and stuff, not to say political discussions-cum-arguments. I'll miss 'em of course I will, it is a big wrench, a big change for me from the routines of the last 18 years. But I genuinely also feel a sense of liberation as I had always put them and their needs/concerns ahead of my own. Don't get me wrong, it was hardly a case of putting my own life on hold for those 18 years, I still worked part-time and published 9 books with three others completed and ready to go. But it's hardly coincidental that within a week of Twin 2 disappearing up to uni, I gave my first two live readings of the year at the end of September. I just seem to have more time, energy and attention now to address things in my own life.

Within the first two weeks of his uni stint, Twin 2 had come down with what was probably "Freshers' Flu"; where they cane it so hard on all the free booze on offer in Freshers' Week that their immune system takes a hammering and they succumb to some germ or other. There was a concern that it might have been meningitis as this is not unknown to hit Freshers for much the same reasons. My wife had set up immunisation injections for both of the twins before they went up to their respective colleges, but it is quite possible that Twin 2 Just didn't bother to turn up for his (we were both at work and besides he's 18 now so the responsibility lies with him and we also have to show him trust). If I'd challenged him as to whether he'd made the appointment he would have certainly lied to us if he had ducked it. At one point I played over in my mind that I might go back up 250+ miles on a train and see for myself what the state of play was with him. Perhaps I ought to point out that the word 'meningitis' stirs up deeper resonances for me, since I had an older sister who I never met die from it at age one month back in the 1960s and the shadow of that tragedy loomed large over my parents and therefore also over my upbringing. But I didn't make any 250 mile mercy dash. It occurred to me that this was the same mechanism as when the infant cries in their cot at night hoping the guilty parent will be drawn back into removing them from the cot and into their arms at least or perhaps into their bed. Because we had twins, this really had never been a viable option for us, making it easier to remain strong and resist the wails than for most parents. I didn't make the trek, but advised him which of the pills I had provided for him in his first aid kit he should self-medicate with. Previously at home, me or my wife would have simply handed him the medicine ant the water to swallow it with.

Still unsure as to whether how well fully recovered Twin 2 was, I had a dream this week which proved auspicious. I'm not a great one for the significance of dreams, partly because I don't remember many of my dreams and secondly having studied Freud at Uni, I remain unconvinced by his explanation of them as having the purpose of unlocking our subconscious. However, the mere fact of remembering this one seemed to proffer its significance, while the two main symbols were outside my normal frame of reference so again piqued my curiosity. In the dream a greenhouse was dismantled and replaced by something I wasn't quite sure of the details, but some sort of mechanism for controlling traffic flow and parking. Now I neither drive nor do I do any gardening so both of these symbols baffled me. I went on Twitter asking for any wandering psychologist to offer an interpretation but no one responded. I kept musing on the dream throughout the day and then I figured it out. A greenhouse is also known as a hothouse, so for me I realised it represented the structure of parenting that I provided for my boys (hopefully not in 'hothouse's' sense of unduly pushing their development towards high achievement, which I think I avoided doing). The dream seemed to be confirming/affirming that I had done my job, the boys had flown the coop, so I could finally take down my structure and 'park' that aspect of my life. The struts of the greenhouse were folded and preserved, so maybe they could be re-erected into another framework for a different purpose in my life. I believe the dream was telling me that it was perfectly fine that I hadn't undertaken any mercy dash. The boys have their independence now and I had done my work as a father to get to them to this point where they would be taking it on for themselves. Of course I recognise that such a role is never over, that you are always going to be a father to them, that the family home will always still offer itself as their home, even though they are unlikely to ever come back for any protracted period to live here. Right from the day they were born, I knew that a part of parenting was a letting go; to allow them to develop their own personalities, their own sense of self in their own space and not to impose my values or beliefs on them with a demand for their adoption. I have let them go to fledge and do you know something, for all the love and involvement of the last 18 years, that it's just fine to do so.

Our Father - A Drabble

Behold my teenage son there. The putto. As might be represented by Lucien Freud rather than Donatello. With halo having become sullied and slipped down from above his crown so as to cincture his features in the form of a hood. The monk with his vow of silence. The black friar stewing in his own tormenting juices. Angelic features framing a demonic countenance. And yet my wife constantly counsels me not to make him break his vow. Thereby he flagellates and scourges me even without removing his hands sheathed in the pouch in his hoodie. Our father who art in Hell...


taken from the Flash Collection "28 Far Cries"

Root And Branch - Friday Flash

I went nap on it. Staked my whole being on it. Never been so sure on anything my whole life. Or so I thought.

Taken a bath on that one haven't I? Post-Natal Depression they sneered. Only being a bloke, I lacked any suspect chemical cocktail swirling around non-varicosed veins.

So here I stand in the middle of the threadbare carpet. Hands splayed over my eyes counting to a... Eighteen years (assuming he'll leave home at eighteen, go to Uni or have a Gap Year or something) times 356 & ^1/4 days (accounts for Leap years) multiplied by twenty-four hours X sixty minutes squared for seconds... 554,040,000...

Christ, counting down from five hundred and fifty four million, never coming ready or not... If the supposed seeker has shuttered his eyes for so long as to refuse to go seek, then is he not the one who is hiding? Multiplied, times... god how do those words resonate inside my head now?

He is threaded in place on the carpet through bare immobility. I am rooted to the spot with fear and love. Fear that I cannot love. While all around me is the bustle of my wife enacting the necessaries for his living. She shuns me in my paralysis. But he? He still reaches out his arms towards me, demanding to be picked up into my arms. Just for the warmth of contact against my body, or more practical sirening of nappy changing or feeding I cannot be sure. When the clamour is for me to somehow assist him in ceasing mewling, the two poles become rather blurred to my mind.

So yes I concede, I do sometimes splay my fingers apart, just to yield me a modicum of sight on the scene. Like viewing through the slats of a drawblind. Playing peek-a-boo which slices my heart into shreds, as I see him innocently mimic me. Sat there dumbly on the floor, unable to express his desires. Exactly the same state as me stood upright and erect here. So clearly altitude has nothing to do with emotional amplitude.

I keep throwing my stone to land on square one, to take that first step. But it continually straddles the line. So my fragile intent is scotched and I remain frozen in place.

He's bawling again. Is he already so broken? You don't think I want nothing more than to burst into tears myself? But I can't. The sole grown up manly trait I manage to exhibit. I can see the line of transmission from father to son, even in one so young. Suckling greedily at my emotional blocks from the distance that separates us. The invisible male umbilical, gnarled and desiccated. And there's not a damned thing I can do to prevent it. Because I too am so broken. Courtesy of the line of transmission from my own father.

All those feelings I had managed to tamp down, like self-loathing, shame (naturally), fear and despair. Well now I can add a new one to it in the form of regret. Have you, little one, imbibed these deep into your marrow by your observations of me? You coming along I had hoped would have banished them all for good. Make me flower and open up. But I can't lay that at your tiny feet now can I? The failing is all my own. I didn't do my research properly.

My eyes still shielded off, yet I hear him padding about the floor. He's developing while I stagnate. I can't tell if he's shuffling on his bottom or propelling himself along by his limbs. I yearn only to play "Statues" because it makes no calls upon me. But as he throws himself at my feet and wraps himself around my ankles, seems like he's playing "What's The Time Mr Wolf?" Argghh, he's shaking me like apples from a tree. Trying to topple me, like statues of dictators being hauled down. Shattering me in my brittleness for once and for all.

I'd dimly imagined he'd stand as a moppet for conducting sympathetic magic. To bring out all these wondrous warm emotions in me. But he is opaque, impenetrable. Perhaps his mother is a yet greater sorceress and that she has invested her dark arts in armouring his floppy frame to buttress him from me.

I have taken root in the worst possible way. Those roots that fork and proliferate until they squat under the foundations of the house. So that if my wife ever sought to put me out of my vegetative state and took an axe to our coupling, the whole house would come tumbling down around her. For this is the house that Jack jerrybuilt. 'This is the man all tattered and torn/That kissed the maiden all forlorn'. She who continues to vacuum and dust around my limp frame. We made this decision to seed together. Now I am lying fallow alone. A graft that just hasn't taken. A cutting that withered on the vine. Like the fate that awaits my son.