The royal hug that will have to stand for all our distant Fathers’ Days
The photograph is so natural, so normal, you double-take when you realise the men in a joshing, affectionate hug are Princes Charles and William, first and second in line to the throne.
No stately, rigid formality here. None of the crisp cool of those black and white pictures released to mark Father’s Day by the Duke of Edinburgh – one an astonishing snap of his family on a day out, the Duke in doublebreasted blazer and dark glasses oozing the icy glamour of Fifties Ian Fleming. No wonder a young Charles looks on a little warily.
The photo of the Princes in their fond embrace touched a chord not just because it is, for them, an unusual public pose. But because this Father’s Day many will have been forced into to the kind of hug-free, arm’s length interaction once modelled by the Royal Family and previously – for most – a thing of the past.
While dads with children at home still got a hand-delivered card, or if they were Dominic Raab a handpainted mug, it was a different story for those who have long flown the nest. The luckiest could enjoy a socially distanced walk or maybe a picnic with Dad or Grandpa. For many a phone call, Zoom or loving social media tribute had to suffice.
All of which make it hard to truly capture the unabashed sentiment of Father’s Day familiar to us all: how did my son get so big, to tuck me under his arm like this? How did the time pass? Yet how lovely that, after all the trials of raising children, after all the mistakes we’ve both made, father and son, how wonderful that we have arrived here, where it all feels so easy. So natural. So normal.
That is the sentiment captured in the snap of the Princes. But taken in Sandringham just last year, it feels every bit as remote as those pulled from the Duke of Edinburgh’s album.
This Father’s Day was devoid of so many of the things that have become central to grandfatherly interactions. It used to be that you would encourage children on, urge them into the mischievous clasp of a man you relied upon to imbue them with a little insurrection: “Yes do climb a branch higher on that tree! I’ll watch”; “Do have another scoop of ice cream. And so what if your parents say you’ll be sick. Hot chocolate sauce on top? What a good idea. I would if I were you.”
Such is the attitude my own father, 90 this year, has long adopted to my children. I wouldn’t have had it any other way. Now of course, there are lots of things I’d have almost any other way. Physical distance is psychological distance. Silly dances on the other side of double-glazed windows are fun, but for my two boys, seven and six, not quite the same as being scooped up on to a knee somehow familiar and somehow different, and being enlightened and entertained all the while having your nose pulled.
It’s not just grandchildren who suffer. How strange it is for adult children, too, prince and pauper alike. How odd it still is to drop off a bag of groceries and retreat; how horrid, frankly, not to able to slip an arm around a shoulder and walk, elbow to elbow, up the grass, glass in hand, to discuss the fate of the government, the global economy, or – in my own Pa’s case – his beloved Gunners.
This year, Father’s Day saw disease interrupt a trend which some may have considered overdone – the familiarity and fondness between generations, particularly men, whose role in family life has changed so fundamentally in the last few decades.
The generation of my own father’s father, back from the trenches, would not have conceived of such boundaries breaking down. I do not lament the disappearance of that stiff upper lip. If, in a quarter of century, when I am the age the Prince of Wales is now, my eldest son is happy to have his picture taken grinning into the camera, my head resting on his chest, I shall consider my job done. That would be the best Father’s Day present of all.
For next year, though, it sure would be wonderful if I could give my own Pa a hug.