Filling the role of a frantic dad helps you to see what is really important
IAM spending the week as a stay-at-home parent. My wife and daughter are away, meaning that I have been left ‘babysitting’, as us menfolk call it when we are expected to look after our own kids. So, for the next few days, it’s my three sons and I.
I like to imagine this scenario would make a great sitcom, starring me as the struggling single dad just trying to get back out there, and lots of canned laughter as I unpack the shopping and realise I bought kitchen roll instead of toilet roll, explaining to the boys that this special loo roll, unlike daddy’s brain, is extra absorbent.
My wife didn’t want to leave me on my own, but
I somehow managed to convince her that it would be fine, closing with the terrifying utterance: “What’s the worst that could happen?”
With a mind filled with scenarios of the worst that could happen, she decided to write me a list of instructions. I was highly insulted to note that the first one was ‘brush teeth’. She might as well have written ‘wipe arse’. Well, I wasn’t going to be talked down to like that, so I used her list to light a fire. I am a man, I thought to myself. I invented the wheel and discovered fire. After five minutes of trying unsuccessfully to light the fire using her list, I opted for a fire log instead, trying to ignore the weeping of my ancestors that their lineage would end up with a man this useless.
THE first school run went swimmingly – I was going to show everyone what punctuality meant, so we were all in the car in various states of cleanliness at 8.20am, raring to go. Unfortunately, so was everyone else in the greater east Cork region, and so it was that we joined an endless, unmoving queue.
This queue was unlike the morning commute to work, as I couldn’ t shove my head out the window and scream abuse at other drivers, as I would have to see them half an hour later in Lidl, buying kitchen roll and/or loo roll. After the staccato hell of the drop-off I went home to enjoy a coffee morning, or whatever else it is my wife does with her free time.
Of course, you get home and there is no free time, as you have the first of five daily washes to get on, breakfast to clear away, and – if you want to treat yourself – a cup of microwaved tea left over from your own breakfast which you didn’t get to eat. This was how the day starts, and it did not stop once, until I collapsed into bed at 9pm , so I could wake at 4am to wonder what else was on my wife’s instruction list, and if I could recover the rest of it from the remnants of my feeble fire.
We are now three days into our manly experiment, and all regressing to a primitive form, eating chunks of meat off the bone (via snack box), going to the bathroom with the door open, and communicating by grunts and ‘Call Of Duty’ trash talking. All I want is to go back to work so I can have a cup of tea that doesn’t contain my own tears, or a conversation that doesn’t revolve around the rabid curs from ‘Paw Patrol’ (inset).
MY wife and daughter aren’t on holidays. My daughter is in hospital in an attempt to get her lupus under control.
As an autoimmune disease, it flares up from time to time, often over a period of months. Symptoms vary, but for her it has led to severe joint pain, lethargy, memory loss, and, most noticeably, hair loss. She had the good fortune to inherit my thick mop of hair, but she has shed so much I marvel that there is any left – after her showers it looks like Chewbacca has been in, getting groomed.
My daughter’s medical team has been using steroids to control the symptoms, which in turn make her irritable, agitated, unable to sleep and also – crucially for a teenage girl – give her acne. So that was her choice – joint pain and hair loss, or no sleep and bad skin.
Soshe is up in Crumlin, getting thecareshe needs, as I lie awake wondering what the rest of her life with this condition will be like. I jokingly call her my little vampire, as she has to wear the highest factor sunblock and must avoid the sun if possible. We joke about it, but we didn’t joke much when we heard that Selena Gomez had a kidney transplant after her lupus attacked her own.
But the condition can be managed, flare ups like this one can be dealt with, and time spent in Crumlin doesn’t just contain her illness, but also teaches you what adversity looks like.
Families come there from all over the country to get help for their chronically sick children, and as you walk the halls you are reminded that, while you would prefer your child to have perfect health, there are people facing far greater odds, and they do it with love and hope. If they can do that, then I can dry my eyes with tripleply kitchen roll and get on with being a parent, albeit one who never, ever remembers to brush his kids’ teeth.