FOREVER FATHER

I am continuously in awe of being a parent. In particular, how my two children have almost complete control over my psychological well-being. At no point has it been more evident than during this emotionally charged moment known as The Pandemic. Saying that, Father’s Day 2020 involved cocktails, veggie burgers and the miracle of entertainment from around the world brought to me via the internet. How the hell did dads cope in 1918?

I grew up in the age when Dad would drive to his local pub and hand the kids a bag of crisps each and disappear inside for an hour of darts and a couple pints. There was the promise of a cold Coca-Cola an hour later to quench the salt thirst. Mum would tell us to go outside to play and ‘don’t come home till suppertime’. They gave us the gift of freedom, self-reliance, and, basically, respected our wishes not to get in the way of a good time.

Time and again, groups of us kids proved the Lord of the Flies theory wrong. In fact, I recall playtime being more democratic than authoritarian. A natural leader would rise to the top and reward those below him with equal doling out of affirmations as long as they didn’t attempt to topple him from his plinth. Me? I was somewhere in the middle… always just on the periphery of events, observing, taking note, eager to recount the exploration of a sewer drain before I understood I was destined to write about it.

To be fair to my parents, they have since informed me they always knew where I was. I do have to wonder, then, why it was they allowed me to play in the lair of evil, subterranean clowns. Yet, I was never in doubt of how much my parents loved me, as they told me so each and every day.

When I think back to one exploration of a tunnel to China, it would have taken a mere sudden downpour to drown my intrepid company. Of course, that’s like saying a meteor could, in theory, crash through the roof and kill me in my La-Z-Boy chair. Without turning this into a discussion on faith, I do believe in a higher power who guides my own sense of morality, though I do not believe I survived daring dos that brought down other children because the force was with me and not them. I leave such delusional confidence to contestants on reality tv singing competitions. I think we can all agree free will is a mixed bag. I was both a smart and a lucky kid.

What if my own children aren’t so lucky? What if the Irish ancestry finally rubs off their generation like old cellophane tape? Am I destined to become not a helicopter parent… but the abbot of a monastery who encourages my children to pour me a beer, while also discouraging them from venturing into the mysterious places of the world to sample the delights I indulged in several decades previous? I was certainly aware of, though not discouraged by, the dangers that conquered ‘other people’.

Now, many years after a backpack and versatile pair of boots, I am governed by statistics. School shootings, stabbings, abductions, and the rabid indignation that rules the world at present and allows otherwise sensible people to view a fellow human being as merely an unseen opponent with no soul overwhelm me. When I was young, you looked into a person’s eyes and sized up that soul face-to-face. Sorry, I said I wasn’t going to make this a discussion about faith.

Yet, how do I bestow the gift of independence, which my parents gifted me in spades, upon my children… while also protecting them from what seems like a much more dangerous world from the one in which I grew up? My grandparents’ assessment of ‘it was just as bad in my day, but no one reported it’ doesn’t wash with me.

I suggested to my wife we look into an English boarding school education when the time comes. She is speaking to me once again. If you have any answers, let’s meet for a pint and discuss. But first, let me just lock the kids in their tower. There will be no crisps for them in the pub car park. No sir!

Happy Father’s Day.