IT'S A DAD'S LIFE:When a confidence is betrayed by a parent, embarrassment and tears quickly follow, writes ADAM BROPHY
I HAVE SEEN the future and it fills me with fear. For I have been privy to the first ever dad-induced breakdown in a little girl due to taunting about said girl’s feelings for another little boy. Dad is an insensitive, know-nothing buffoon.
It opened up with such honesty. I’m driving the elder home from school and she’s ripping to shreds the character of a boy in her class. I know the boy, he’s all energy, full of yap, a good kid. He’s taken an interest in winding the elder up. Whether he does this to all the girls or just her I don’t know.
“He probably fancies you.” It’s out before I can stuff it back in.
“Well, I don’t fancy him. I fancy . . .” And it’s out before she can stuff it back in. She’s aware in advance of the grin stretching across my features, the ‘Oooh’ before it escapes my lips. The built-in embarassometer kicks in, the flush creeps from her neck. I grab the ‘Oooh’ while it’s stillborn and get mature, parental even.
I try on a few responses but none seem suitably supportive. I muster a paltry, ‘He seems like a really nice kid. Do you two hang out?’
She manages a “yeah” but the head is down and she’s out of the car making for the house. I let it go.
A proper dad would make time to ask about her feelings and what her concept of “fancying somebody” is. She is, after all, at the grand old age of seven. A proper dad would assure her that she is bound to begin to notice her feelings for the opposite sex are different to the way she feels about her friends.
A proper dad would sit her on his knee, read her a story and remind her she’s only a little girl. Not this dad. This dad waits for an opening at the dinner table and hits her with it right between the eyes.
The younger is doing a good enough job of winding her sister up. She has twigged that boy A is a source of irritation to her sister and has decided to turn the knife in the wound. She is chanting “You fancy boy A” over and over. A proper dad would step in, insist that taunting has no place at the dinner table, no place in our house in fact, distract and move the process on.
Not this dad. This dad instead points out that the elder does not actually fancy boy A, she instead has the hots for boy B, as blurted in confidence in the car the previous day. This dad thinks he’s hilarious.
The elder’s head drops once more. The lip goes aquiver. Head into hands. Shoulders start to shake and heave. A primordial “mwah” emerges from the mop of hair spread across the table. Her plate of pasta is pushed away with the urgency of despair.
I backpedal but “Honey, I’m only messing with you” sounded as weak then as it looks written here. She sobs and coughs.
This isn’t anger or fear, it’s an embarrassment she can’t put a name on, one I recognise all too well from my own childhood. Those times when you collapsed inwardly as people around you, people who seemed to find your confusion a wonderful source of mirth, took pleasure in giggling inanely at your discomfort. Then attempted a weak, retrospective denial by claiming they were “only messing”.
I gave up on words and tried to draw her on to my lap. She resisted and, for once when offered a cuddle, did not relent. I felt the cold knife of hypocrisy twist my gut and wondered was I destined to repeat every misplaced step my own parents took. She went to her mother and lay limp, confused as to what had upset her so, only knowing her dad was the cause of the way she felt.
I apologised and meant it. Yet I knew I couldn’t take it back. And at the same time realised this was the first of many times I would open my mouth and what would emerge would cause contractions of the spirit of those I seek hardest never to hurt.
Neither boy A nor B has been mentioned since. More pressing concerns such as the start of a new season of swimming lessons have come to the fore. But I need her to bring it up again. I need her to feel she can, or a part of her life will be shut off from me before it ever begins. And it’ll be my own fault.
abrophy@irishtimes.com