Despite my tough exterior I’m really just a big softy...
reads two books, then flicks the light off and walks out. Mary inevitably stops crying five minutes later and falls asleep, allowing Mrs C to enjoy a relaxing night on the couch watching Coronation Street and exchanging messages on her ‘baby mum friends’ WhatsApp group. But I can’t leave my daughter when she’s crying, mainly because I am soft.
Of course, my daughter is manipulating me and, like a spider who’s snared a massive fly, has me exactly where she wants me.
First we play dentists, which involves me sticking my head under the duvet while she’s at work. After around 15 minutes of this, and as I’m rapidly losing the will to live, I tell her Wee Willie Winkie is outside. She’s genuinely scared of him and quivers under the covers at his very mention.
For a couple of minutes she goes very quiet and still – at which point I always, without fail, naively think ‘has she actually dropped off? – until she suddenly says, ‘tell me a story daddy’. I ask what story she wants and every night – and I mean every night – she replies, ‘daddy bird and the chicks get stuck up a tree in the park’, I have no idea where she has got this from but even the most inventive of minds would struggle to, for 43 nights in a row, make up a different story with exactly the same plot line.
This whole routine goes on for about an hour and 20 minutes before eventually Mary drops off.
Often I nod off as well and have, many times now, been woken by Mrs C hitting me on the arm at about 10pm, and hissing ‘you put her to bed three hours ago, where the hell have you been?’
Anyway, back to the very first line of this column and my sobbing fit. The other night, I’d invented three stories about daddy bird and the chicks getting stuck up a tree when Mary drowsily looked at me and said, ‘Daddy, will you still sleep with me when I’m grown up?’
To which the obvious answer would be, ‘well, no, because that’d weird Mary and the police would probably get involved’ – but which actually suddenly made me realise that one day we won’t have this beautiful bond, that I won’t always be the centre of her universe, that she won’t shout for me the minute I walk through the door and she won’t beg me to put her to bed … and I began crying.
I was in my daughter’s bed, a grown man, actually sobbing at the thought of her growing up.
I told Mrs C this quite beautiful and poignant story when I went downstairs. ‘Have you been drinking?’ she asked.
I’m not sure whether it’s embarrassing I cried or a good thing I love my child so much, or somewhere in between.
What is certain is that next time I put her to bed I’m taking a packet of Kleenex.