IT'S A DAD'S LIFE:Raising children is more than simply creating a clone of yourself, writes Adam Brophy
THE BEAUTY of holidays is getting to read, chewing through full texts in days where usually they'd sit by your bed for months. The last tome to be digested was Hanif Kureishi's Something To Tell Youand I'm left feeling sick. This happens occasionally - I enjoy a book so much that depression settles in because I know I'll never write anything as good myself.
Kureishi's brilliance is in telling a story outlandish in its honesty, where the characters mask their guile with apparent, overt truth. The plot, presented as normal existence, is as extravagant as the most lurid Martin Amis tale, and each character seems to represent a certain moral standpoint with which the hero is grappling.
One of these, a minor sub-plot, is the nature of his relationship with his 12-year-old son. Near the close of the story, father accompanies son to school during his first week in a new establishment, notes the need for his presence and realises it is unlikely it will be required again. He sees his son off with a sad acknowledgement of an independent persona forming.
Many tearful parents will experience something similar this week, either at the primary or the secondary school gate. The emotional wrench is more obvious as the Junior Infants stroll into the system for the first time ever, but the child's enmeshment in that system seems more compounded as they head nonchalantly into the battleground that is first year.
Coincidentally, as I was thinking about this topic, I happened to pick up a copy of The Prophetby Kahlil Gibran. This is a book I have always found to be too soulful for its own good. Reading it feels like being force-fed organic lentil bake by an ageing crusty with ratty dreadlocks and a house full of cats.
You want to ask her why, if this is so healthy, is she three stone overweight and how can she live in a place that smells of feline pee?
The Prophetopened randomly at page 13, which is about children, and my eye was drawn to the lines: "You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you. For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday."
Two things. Firstly, that was written in the early 20th century, so why he had to write in a Biblical voice is beyond me. Secondly, as usual when you look at something with disdain you find a little nugget of truth that sits in your stomach like unwanted wisdom.
The elder child starts first class this week, but the younger has another year with us before she makes her entrance. I had managed to convince myself that, while I love the elder taking off for school each morning, my reservations are related to her being indoctrinated: educationally, societally and morally.
But it's not that at all. My anxiety stems from my losing the fingerholds to indoctrinate her myself, into the Church of Me. Fortunately, I have 12 further months to complete the brainwashing of her sister.
Teachers often write in report cards: "Has difficulty with authority."
They never wrote that in mine. I was sunshine and light - I believed in authority. Right up to my 20s, when my peers would question the reason for being denied anything, I would assume there was a valid and purposeful point in the powers that be creating certain rules.
At some point in my adult life that slipped. Now I question everything, to my wife's unending horror.
During the recent floods, I attempted to drive to my local Centra to buy milk. A pink-faced adolescent in a Garda uniform insisted that all traffic be siphoned in the opposite direction and, when I asked for clarification, he roared at me to "just move!"
Somewhere, in a parallel universe, I am sitting in a cell awaiting trial for GBH on that Garda. All that was required was for him to say that traffic was being diverted due to a flash flood, and that was the reason I was to spend an hour in the car in pursuit of semi-skimmed. The red mist took a couple of hours to dissolve that evening.
I try not to send the child to school with any preconceptions. I encourage her to get involved, to listen and to figure things out herself. She is cautious but questioning. She likes to know how things work, and why.
However, I have become aware that she distrusts the voice of authority and that can only be down to direct osmosis from me. Such questioning can lead to difficulty in school.
It should be encouraged, but only when it comes from the person and is not a misguided attempt to be someone else. I seek not to make her like me.
Cheers, Kahlil, you wordy git.