A DAD'S LIFE:When you get time to yourself, what do you do?
DOES EVERY father dream of a quiet house, the only steps their own? Do we all imagine what it’s like to go out the door, come back and find nothing has been moved; to see time as our own – long expanses of it to be filled with fulfilling only our own requirements?
When it happens, does every father then stutter round the house, uncertain where to sit because the choice is overwhelming? It’s not even eight in the morning and I’m on my third mug of coffee. I could be in bed. They’ve all gone away.
I’ve even had a ciggie, my first in weeks. Not because I wanted one, but because I could – and the coffee tasted so good with the illicit smoke rolling down my throat. There’s beer in the fridge too and the prospect of Heineken for breakfast raises its head. It is rejected as foolish, but hey, I’ve the whole week. Who knows what could happe by Thursday?
A school mum, on hearing my brood were departing without me, suggested that I live without a clock and see what time my body found its level at. That seemed apt: without running after kids, you’re rich in time. But I have to keep the watch on just so I know when I’m supposed to be doing things and when not.
Whenever they go away I plan on catching up on work, on exercise, on jobs. I plan on catching up on plans because when the family is around it’s hard to make plans. Then I clean the house and spend a lot of time worrying about mucking it up because I have it just right and if it gets messy again there’ll only be me to blame.
When the house is super clean, I sit in front of the computer with my list of things to catch up on. I look at it for a while before turning the telly on. Telly in the morning is not good. It makes me want more coffee and cigarettes and beer. I leave it on, walk through the clean house back to my list.
The list is broken into required actions and aspirations. The required actions will ensure I get paid. They are the things I would fit in while the kids are in school. They are the things I am always behind on, that are supposed to be caught up on when opportunities like this arise.
The aspirations are much more interesting and far more vague. They range from writing award-winning, bestselling novels to starting up companies that will achieve global domination within a year.
A friend used to call them my “plans for today”. He’d shake his head as if it were ridiculous to consider doing something beyond the nuts and bolts. He’d shake his head knowing I’d never get round to whatever I was suggesting on a given day.
Most of the time he’s right of course. His dismissal of my ideas stems from the time I tried to convince him to import second-hand BMWs from Germany, pointing out how cheaply we could buy them over there and how expensive the same models were here.
Even after paying the taxes we’d still be quids in. “Yeah,” he said, “but the German ones are left-hand drive.” I hadn’t thought of that. Idea scrapped, along with a host of others.
The thing is, the ideas are important. In the past three months I’ve decided to set up a new triathlon magazine, proposed a radio show, outlined a nationwide rollout of support groups for out-of-work fathers and filled in the application form to become a teacher.
Normally my hit rate is a lot less than one-in-four, so the chances of any of these things happening is slim, but eventually one will slip past the planning phase and enter the realm of “stuff that gets done”.
Of course, when an idea becomes reality it loses a lot of its lustre. Possibly the only exception to this, in my experience, is having a family. That’s a decision made in complete ignorance, with a biological imperative as the chief motivating factor.
Once steps are taken they are irreversible and they have consequences more far-reaching than the most outlandish ideas I’ve had before or since.
Having a family takes up your time. It makes time, when it returns temporarily, strange and exotic. It reminds you that coffee, cigarettes and beer for breakfast aren’t the ideal start to the day just because you are denied them most days.
It reminds you to go back to the list and keep making plans because good things come from having ideas.
abrophy@irishtimes.com