There’s a crack in everything ... that’s how the light gets in, baby
THIS MAN’S LIFE
THERE’S nothing, repeat nothing — not large amounts of cash, not Champagne, not an exceptional meal, not a swim in a warm ocean surrounded by smiling dolphins — to beat the sound of silence after your baby has finally gone to sleep for the night.
When this happens, when Emila nods off, it reminds me of those Thomas Carlyle lines about when the great oak is felled the whole forest echoes with its fall, but a hundred acorns are sown in silence by an unnoticed breeze. In our house, it is a moment of poetry, of not unnoticed relief, after hours of dreading that our child was not going to go asleep again. I had that dread the other night at 2am. She woke up in her cot, crying.
When I say crying it was arguably that put-on cry that babies do when they are playing you like a violin and they know it — and you know it but you don’t have the guts to tell her that you know. So I did what I always do when I am at my wits end with my baby: I gave her a soother. Indignant, she stood up in the cot and put her hands up for me to pick up her. Thus began a psychological game in the early hours that was to end in tears. Mine more than hers. I tried the little angel with her soother once more, proceeding by rubbing her head, and attempted to put her down in her cot again. Even more indignant this time (in fact she couldn’t have looked more indignant bordering on aggrieved if she tried) Emilia stood up and put her hands up for me to pick her up. And now. While my wife slept oblivious in the big bed, baby and I persisted this drawn-out charade of soother-and-trying-to-puther-down-in-her-cot; until I gave up and picked her up and put her in bed between me and the sleeping wife.
All was fine for the first five minutes. Emilia had the good sense not to rub my nose in her victory: she closed her eyes and pretended to sleep, snuggled up to her not-pretendingto-sleep mother. Then I noticed that the plan of a good night’s sleep was unravelling. I felt an odd movement in the bed, then on the bed. Emilia was crawling around the bed, giggling and playing. Suddenly, a light-bulb went on. And not in my mind.
My wife had woken up and switched on the bedroom light. My wife gave me a look that put the heart sideways in me. The baby then gave us both a look that seemed to say what was all the fuss and it was perfectly normal to be up and playing and laughing at 2.30am. “Why did you pick her up out of cot?” “I couldn’t help it. She tricked me.” I knew as soon as I got the words “tricked me” out I was in trouble. “Tricked you? You’re 49! She’s not even two yet! She doesn’t have superpowers to hypnotise and bend you to her will.”
Oh, but she does. My wife was wrong. (And I’d like to put it on the record for the world to see: my wife is never wrong.) Re-read what Sam Neil wrote in The Spectator magazine in 2013 and tell me I’m not mad:
I suspect they are born with some innate hypnotic superpower that renders the new parent robotically helpless. When your newborn first gazes coolly upon you from its comfy cradle thing, if you listen very carefully, you might hear a tiny voice at the back of your brain. The baby is saying, in a cute but steely way — ‘I am going to count from one to ten. When I get to ten, you will see me as the Most Beautiful Being in the Universe. And you will feed me, clean me, house me and lavish me with tender ministrations 24/7 for years and years, until such time as I am sick to death of you and decide to leave home.’ Silently you reply, telepathically — ‘Yes, oh Divine One, we hear and obey.’
The Divine One is the life and soul of our house. And our lives. Always smiling. Always laughing. She doesn’t have the passive-aggressive positivity of so many older kids. She just thinks everything is amazing. Even Donald Trump.
On Wednesday evening before bedtime, she pointed up at The Donald on Sky News on the telly and said ‘Bear!’, and laughed to herself. In fairness to the 45th President of the United States of America, everyone seems to be a bear these days. This has been the case ever since Emilia read a baby book about the little bear in the forest. The little bear is normally carried across the tree branches in the ravine in her daddy, the big bear’s arms but one day the little bear decides she wants to walk across the branches over the ravine by herself. I secretly dread the day when baby Emilia wants to walk down the street without holding her daddy’s hand. She is such fun to be around. Emilia is like an anti-depressant for everyone she meets. She has them smiling and giggling along with her within seconds. It is difficult, even impossible, to feel down when she is running around the house calling everything ‘Bear!’
I hope she is having a happy childhood so far. Although I admit a slight bias here, Emila seems to be doing just great. My own childhood sometimes appears to have taken place so long ago that I no longer trust my memory of it. Apart from the usual insecurities (how can I ever live up to her love for me?) I get terrified sometimes that I won’t be able to properly prepare her to navigate an often indifferent world. The thought that stressed-out fathers tend to produce more stressed-out children horrifies me sufficiently to try everything. Yoga. TM. Reiki. Maybe I should just dress up as a bear.
But to finish the story I started with: Emilia eventually went to sleep in our bed. But she was woken up at dawn with the sun in her eyes because I hadn’t drawn the curtains properly. There’s a crack in everything, that’s how the light gets in.