Being Dad!

“To be a father is an impossible thing to describe to a daughter. There is no frame of reference as a child, or even as an adult, at which you will ever feel for one second what a father does. Of course, that is not your fault, how could it be? It is true though.

Maybe as I get older I can be more clear and eloquent in the way I express myself. Perhaps the grey hairs and the muscles that are beginning to weaken are a stimuli in wanting to tell you these things. I don’t know. Perhaps it was that throw away comment in work I heard this week, the name of my child that I never held or kissed, that made me reflect far too much. The truth must be said, and in words written as opposed to verbal exchanges. In the last few years I have given my heart almost too freely, to people who were not deserving in some eyes, but not mine, never mine. For my heart will always have room for you. How could it not? A father’s love is something that cannot be measured. There are a trillion quotes on social media about a mothers love, and who am I to argue, but even though a father’s love is different, it does not make it any less powerful, any less real than that your mother holds for you. The love of a father can never be less than whole, for what are we if we ignore our deepest desires and refuse to nurture those we love?

You see, we don’t carry you for nine months prior to seeing you, not in a physical sense. That is a mother’s role but don’t ever fool yourself that we wouldn’t if we could. Don’t ever fall into the trap that we are oblivious to you for those nine months. We may not see you, we may not feel you moving inside us, but we love you from the moment we know you are there. We plan, we dream and we hope. We pray, whether we are religious or not, that we will be fortunate enough to see you arrive. To see you emerge healthy into this world and that you will have the right number of fingers and toes, but even if you didn’t, it would make no difference. You are our world long before you enter it. We talk to you, we place our hands on your temporary home and feel you kick us, and we watch you when your mum is asleep and dream with you. We really do.

When your mum goes into labour and you are about to meet everything for the first time, we try to be brave and in control but the truth is we are terrified. Your mother is in agony and it is our fault as we are often reminded, and we want to help her but we want to see you. We want to be anywhere but where we are but would fight a banshee to stay there nonetheless. You see, the moment you are born, everything changes, everything. Every relationship we have ever held, every measure of love we thought to be true is immediately replaced by you. Our daughter. You weigh less than a small dog, but know this, for all those who think a fur baby is a replacement or equivalent to a furless one, they are barking mad.

The moment you are born there is a rush of emotion, a total eclipse of the heart. Nothing can ever be the same after this moment. To cut the chord that links you to your placenta is not a mere symbolic gesture, it is far more than that. It is the moment we know as fathers that we are men, that we cannot ever again be a boy. Our path now is a very clear one, it is to love you, to protect you and destroy anything that even threatens to ever harm you. That chord serves as our link to the past, as much as it relates to your future.

The Greeks believed in the three fates, Clotho who spun the thread of life, Lachesis who measured the thread and finally, Atropos, responsible for the severing of the thread, who decided when your time was at an end. We cut the thread and it is an act of Atropos, for in that moment we say goodbye to our former life, we cannot shirk responsibility or look to diminish our role. We do not sever a tie between your mother and you, that is impossible and something we would never choose, it is a moment where we end one part of our very own being. Only the most cold hearted of men would ever choose to go back to how things were. I would rather die.

But you see, it is not just that moment. It is every moment. The total abandonment of self is as natural to us as fathers as it is to mothers. Some people will tell horror stories of fathers who resent their children, seeing them as an obstacle that blocks their love for their partner. This is rubbish. Utter rubbish. My greatest delight when you were days and weeks old was not laying next to your mother, but in getting up in the middle of the night and feeding you. Those moments are something I truly cherish. It didn’t matter what time it was, for in those moments with everyone else asleep, it was just you and I. The two of us in our own world and I would cry sometimes, just looking at you. Sometimes you would fight the urge to feed and struggle and I would sing to you, words that only you and I heard, and we would take as long as you needed. I would wind you and place you back in your cot and watch you fall asleep, letting you hold my finger. I would go back to bed but I could not sleep immediately, I was so overcome with love for you. I would look at your mother sleeping, snoring though she would deny it, and I would love her even more for she had given me you. These are glimpses of a time when everything was right and nothing could go wrong.

Your mother and I are no longer husband and wife so clearly things did go wrong but know this now, and take it your grave, your mother and I love you girls with a passion that will not burn out over time, which will not get boring or jaded, for it truly is unconditional. I have watched you grow and it is both amazing to see and heartbreaking at the same time. There is part of me that would always wish for you to fit in my arms with your head nestled between my shoulder and neck, for I knew you were safe, that nothing or anybody could ever harm you.

I recall your first smile, your first crawl, your first steps and your first teeth. I remember the times you had colic or trapped wind and it would be awful to watch, for we feel your pain as much as you do, both physical as young children and emotional now, as you approach the trials that adolescence brings. There is not even a slight element of whimsy or romanticism in that statement. When you fall, it is our stomachs that lurch and we wait to feel the impact before you have even realised you have lost your balance. We laugh at the things that matter so much to you as you enter the toddler stage, because it makes us realise how dependant you are upon us, not just for love and comfort, but to educate you, to teach you right from wrong. We want you to be strong and to fight your own battles and the hardest thing of all is to ‘let you learn a lesson’, for that involves watching you hurt, and that is sheer torture. That holds true regardless of how old you are or how old you feel. You never stop being our little girl.

Unfortunately, you do grow. You must and we have to accept that but in itself that is hard, for we know as fathers that we are eminently replaceable. Societal pressures would see you married and with children of your own. Our love is often overlooked in a society where even though male chauvinism is all too common, the ultimate power lays with the women. Equality is often talked about in terms of wages, of fair play and a need to see equal representation of men and women in almost every public forum. How ironic that so many courts in the land, so called bastions of male superiority have diminished the rights of a father to a token, where our love for you is seen as secondary to the rights of a mother when it really isn’t. I have no money, I have no riches other than you, and that is how I like it. There is nothing that can be taken from me that hasn’t been already, other than your love.

I have been fortunate, incredibly so, that both your mother and I, despite what you may think at times, have always been able to find common ground. Since the day we parted, not once have I ever been denied the right to be your father, or been told I can love you with caveats and conditions placed upon my affection or desire to be part of your life. In the last few years, I have seen children used as pawns in futile games played between former partners who once shared something they had no reason to share, for if their love of their own ego is worth more than the needs of their child, they were never fit to be a parent. I admire couples who remain childless because they have the maturity to admit that they are too selfish to give up what they have, and at the same time I mourn for those who cannot have children when it is clear they were cut out for parenthood.

The saddest thing of all is when children are seen as an extension of the parent. You aren’t an extension of me. I hope you never see yourself as that. You are intrinsically and thankfully, you. You are everything that you choose to be and whatever path you should walk in life, rest assured, I will walk it alongside you, for that is my purpose. Nothing in life can break me, nothing, other than the thought of you not being there. I hope, God I hope, that we will always be close, but even if life dictates we can’t be then I know you are alive, that you are living a life that you have chosen and I will be at peace with that.

You as my child owe me nothing, but I owe you everything, for the man with nothing to die for is the man who has nothing to live for, and trust me, as clichéd and trite as it may sound, I would lay my life down in any given moment to protect you and  keep you safe.  So to be your dad is something that I could never ever step back from, I will fight for you, I will cry for you and if I could I would die for you.

Life is not promised to anyone, in one blink of an eye it can be taken and that is why I must write this now. I intend to be around for many more years and I hope to be of course, but I cannot promise that. What I can promise you is that for as long as I am able I will be there for you, in every sense, at every turn, for my commitment to you is not born from these words, it is not just a matter of saying these things, it is what makes me. I have looked long and hard for so many years to find my soul mate, and I was wrong to, for you girls are my soul. You made me believe in me when others wouldn’t. You made me fight when I wanted to give up and you allowed me to love you unconditionally and love me back the same way (most of the time). I am not the perfect dad, I am anything but in fact, but I have never once claimed to be. I have simply tried to be the very best that I can be, and even when I fall short, which I do, and you will yourself as parents, it is never intentional.

Two notions that are often bandied about are that parents make sacrifices and that they ‘made you’. Both of those philosophical soundbites are completely wrong though. You see, sacrifice suggests there was a choice between two things, and one must be picked over the other. I have never sacrificed anything for there is nothing that can even stand close to you, let alone challenge your needs in my eyes. You come first, there is no second. As for making you, what a ludicrous thought. You made me.   Of course I love you, of course, but if I had just two words to say to you on a distant death bed then they would simply be, thank you.”