IT'S A DAD'S LIFE:Thrown from young love into grown-up responsibility, writes ADAM BROPHY
YOU DON’T GET many weekends like that. Ireland stuffing Australia followed a day later by the Dubs performing heroic escapist contortions and sticking it to Kerry in a manner designed, it appeared specifically, to provoke acts and speeches of braggadocio for many years no matter what results follow.
It was against this backdrop, the Blues on the Hill still in full-throated, steroid-veined roar, that the Cork buddy I watched the game with, against all his natural inclinations, suggested: “C’mon, let’s go get pints. That was definitely pint-worthy.”
Conscious I was probably the last Dub in the country not slurring words, I moved to join him but then had a realisation. “Nah, better not. Have to get home, been gone most of the weekend either watching games or playing them.”
He looked at me in mild disgust. “So what? It’s not like you’re changing nappies.” Isn’t that the truth? I’m not changing nappies. I’m not sterilising bottles or rinsing babygros. Our house does not suffer a lingering stench of luminescent bodily fluids. We own neither a buggy nor a rock-a-tot. We go for walks unattached by ropes. If we enter a restaurant it’s without studying the layout for back doors in case a frantic departure is required, the sound of screams marking our exit.
We’ve made it out the other side. As the eldest approaches her 10th birthday, life is physically, if not always emotionally, easier. Ten years have slipped by, from that first scrabble to fix a car seat unaided while blocking traffic outside Holles Street, to a time when, if required, I could attach a Britax blindfolded and one-handed.
Ten years when it seemed another match would never be watched with full attention, when any act would ever be contemplated again with full attention, because there was one, then two, mewling creatures that at all times demanded at least a portion of that attention. But you learn to live with that, in what must be a primal biological response, and the energy required to manage your needs and their needs comes, and soon becomes natural. Until you reach a point where you find yourself, once again, enjoying your own particular habits without any real concern, at that moment anyway, for the health and safety of your brood. They are being taken care of elsewhere, they have no real need for you. Ahh, bliss.
I knew this time would come. That the physical and time demands would be replaced by, as I have daughters, an emotional battle of wits. So it has unfolded, so it will continue. Ten years ago we prepared to batten down the hatches. We had a vague idea what was coming, what demands would be made. We braced. We enjoyed.
What we didn’t factor in, me and the missus, was how we would have to relearn how to be with each other. And now, with a little breathing space, I wonder why those pressures aren’t highlighted more as I watch couple after couple launch naively into parenthood unaware that at some point, not far down the track, they will face each other at 3am over a sick infant’s cot, look the other in the eye and blame him or her wholeheartedly for the current situation.
Most relationships survive, some don’t, but all bear the scars of the power struggle that unfolds over those few years when time is no longer yours. Antenatal classes don’t make even a cursory nod towards how you will feel on lockdown with the one other person who wants to escape the drudge as much as you do. As for the church’s pre-marriage class, forced on so many couples who just want to get hitched in the building they were dragged to every week of their childhood, those boys have no idea of the well of resentment that can build in a couple strained to the point of a fraying terrycloth.
These are skills you learn on the job. Older couples, relatives and friends recognise the signs, varying from shortness with each other to thinly disguised contempt and even an inclination to out-and-out violence. They remember their time in the trenches and know they can’t step in with words that will make the transfer from young lovers to proper grown-ups any easier. All they can do is offer to take the kids some time, maybe wander over and make dinner occasionally. Provide time, quiet time, and allow that couple to percolate.
Percolate, simmer, boil, reduce, enhance. Having kids doesn’t just change you, it alters you plural. That collective noun “couple” gets a going over and does not emerge unscathed. That any couple makes it through astounds me, and I’m nearly as surprised, as I am grateful, that this pair did. So far.