#301: 6 months of you
6 months of Dad to Xander.
It’s been 6 months of you.
You say “goo” and I say “How was your day then?” You say “gah” and I say “Really? Did you enjoy it?”
We talk, not typical conversations. A series of “goos” “gahs” and “ehs”. You reach for my face. You scream “ahhhh” when I turn away. You always smile first thing in the morning when we open the blinds.
You’re in my bones now. When we wrestle, you lie on my chest and I say “are you gonna get me?” “you’re not gonna get me”. You’ve already got me. I’m yours.
When I look up from that spot, your face is my whole world. It’s only when I see you from a distance, in your high chair or in someone else’s arms that I remember how tiny you still are.
There’s never been any doubt, but perhaps on some level there was. There is now no doubt that you are here. You’re in my life, forever. That thought settles me now, whereas perhaps it frightened me before. Is this it? Yes, this really is it. Yes, you really are here. “You enjoyed your brocolli last night didn’t you? It’s nice isn’t it. Mummy and Daddy like brocolli too.”
I thought I’d want to share you all the time. I thought being a dad would become my new thing. I thought maybe, I’ll become a dad-fluencer. Maybe, maybe being a dad will give me a new professional purpose.
You have given me a new purpose, but not a professional one. Not one for social media. I’m yours, all yours. This isn’t for everyone else.
I share so many of my thoughts and ideas with others that I want you just for me. I don’t want to bare my journey as a dad all the time. I want privacy, I want intimacy, I want what we have in our four walls to be special - just for us. I thought I might think deeply about my role as a dad. I might read books and write about fatherhood. But I don’t want to, I don’t want to think about being a dad and turn it into a job online. I want my job with you as a dad in the real world.
Because here’s the truth. I’m already noticing the moments when I’m not fully present with you. When I drift off thinking about work. I don’t like it. I don’t hate it, i’m kind enough to myself to let it go, but I don’t like it. I don’t want you, or our family to become my work. You’re my life. I don’t need to read books to tell me how to be a dad. I already know how to be one, it’s in me. When I am totally present with you - nothing has ever felt more natural to me in all my life. For once, just once - I don’t need to think. For someone who lives in their head, I can’t tell you how much of a pleasure this is. How real this feels.
All of these feelings that come up are enough for me for a lifetime. The complexity, the strain, the guilt, the presence, the helplessness, the lack of control. I didn’t know what to do when you had that cough last week, I wish I could tell you just to blow your nose. I wish I could blow it for you.
Your growth dictates our life. Everything about you is new and everything about our life right now is new. Sarah, who I now refer to 60% of the time as “Mummy” is ordering new baby grows every 5 minutes, she’s googling “allergic reactions to Aubergine” and I’m assembling new furniture or baby products at 9.30pm every night.
Your growth is explosive and our life is exploding with you in it. Every morning is like that scene in Harry Potter in Bellatrix Lestrange’s vault at Gringotts. Toys, books, nappies, wet wipes, milk, bottles, food exploding and multiplying everywhere and everywhere until you can’t see the floor. We tidy it up again and again and again, for you to put that little red cup in your mouth and throw it on the floor again and again and again.
It’s all new. New furniture. New routines. New teeth. Blink and we miss it. We miss you.
And we are obsessed with you. We’re all obsessed with you. I’m obsessed with your breath. How you breathe. Breath itself. It’s as if you are a living embodiment of life itself. Do you take the breath in? Or are you given the breath by the world? You’re giving me answers to questions I didn’t know I had and giving me even more questions to answer.
I want to be more like you and less like me. You make me want to be a child again, a baby. I love seeing the world through your eyes. I never noticed the tiny flower buds on that bush at the bottom of the garden. I never looked up and saw the bare branches of that tree against the blue sky. I never stopped for long enough to listen to the wind chime and watch the birds in the sky. “Gah” “Yes, that is a birdy”
Your eyes might just be the greatest gift, to hold you up to the world and be your platform - to let you look out from our body. And to gaze in them, as deep as I can to let you know how loved you are. To see the ocean in those eyes. The waves of possibility and of imagination, of who you are and who you might be. There is so much depth in those eyes.
I have to constantly give myself permission to be here. To be with you. I have to constantly remind myself that work isn’t the only way to be a dad, even though it feels like a really big one. The hunger to provide in me is real. I want to make money. For you, for us, for our life and I’m owning this urge within me. It feels real and true. Yet I also have the growing desire to be as physically present with you as I can and this is a conflict. I might be only the second man in my whole family tree who really has the privilege and option to be a very present dad. So I try and tear myself away from my desk when I know i’m done. Even though I’m scared to stop, I never regret finishing early to be with you.
Only now, possibly for the first time have I taken a moment to stop and let you sink further into me. 3 months ago I said that you were on my skin. Now you’re in my bones.
6 months of you and I’m only just realising that I have a lifetime of you.
Cheers,
Dad x
