It was a warm night in June, late in the evening but I had lost sense of time. A bundle in a blanket was handed to me, lighter than I had anticipated, but heavy with expectation. “You’ll need to put the baby-grow on her now”, I was told. I was about to say, “How can I? It’s in my bag. How can I open my bag to find it if I’m holding the baby?” Instead, I said to myself: “You have two hands. Use them”. It’s not an especially difficult task. Quickly parents learn to open bags, doors and tins of baby milk-powder with one hand, while the other gently cradles and supports the new-born. But the first time is experimental. There is no preparation, no rehearsal, no training course that can capture the feeling: that moment when everything changes forever. They say that the Rubicon was a small stream, but it carried a vast flow of meaning for those who waded across it. One moment fatherhood is merely an idea, a theoretical proposition, the next it is a real, physical, urgent demand. The baby is in my hands, wrapped in a hospital blanket and needing to be dressed for the night: I am on the cusp of becoming responsible.
I wrap my right hand around your small fingers and ease your arm into the sleeve. Balancing your body on my leg, I use my free hand to open out the cuff, allowing me to draw your baby hand safely through. I repeat three times for each of your other limbs. I button up the baby-grow, which is now far too big but within weeks will be far too small. For the next year you will change every day, but I know this moment will stay with me forever. The first time that I dressed you, that I kept you warm, that I prepared you for sleep; the first time that I took responsibility for you because – for now – you cannot be responsible for yourself.
We have names and identities of our own, but our relationship to each other endows each of us with another name, another identity. I am Mark and you are Ysabel, but I am your father and you are my daughter. We are bound together, for better or worse. Let’s hope for the better. We will both need to work at that. For now, there is a profound asymmetry in our relationship, which places an obligation on me that I want to understand in full, and discharge as best I can. I know that you are a part of me, but also separate from me. I want to protect you but not to suffocate you. Sometimes at night when you cry, I take you downstairs and I sleep on the sofa, I lay you on top of me, with a blanket covering us both. I worry that if I move in my sleep you will fall. Instead I lay you by my side, but now I worry that if I roll-over I might crush you. There is no good solution. I lie awake and listen to you breathe. I make sure you are warm. I will be tired tomorrow at work. Never mind.
Part of my responsibility is to be away from you: most days I go to work, to earn money, to pay the bills, to provide for you, to ensure stability and security as best I can. Sometimes this is a relief: reading the FT on the bus, staring at my Reuters and Bloomberg screens, adult company and wine at lunch, hours spent puzzling over my Excel worksheets, looking for something that others have missed, trying to understood what these numbers and the shape of these graph-lines mean, more clearly, more fully than what is implied by the asset-weighted-market-average. Sometimes a very early morning taxi takes me to the airport to catch an early morning flight to somewhere: where there are prospective clients with money to invest, or existing clients to whom reports must be made, or conferences at which to listen or to speak. There are sights to be seen, people to meet, food and drink to enjoy. Wherever I go, for however long I am away, there is always the moment of return: I will open our front door and you will be there. Will you smile when you see me again? Or will you scowl and turn the other way? How little you know your power to break my heart.
I put you in the car seat and drive down to Whitechapel, to the large supermarket. It’s not the nearest, but it is a trip out, just the two of us. I have a long shopping list, but we have plenty of time and we have more than enough money to pay for the food. Unlike the indoor adventure playground, to which I sometimes take you on a Saturday morning, at the car park we don’t have to pay an entry fee. I put you in the shopping trolley with a child seat. I check you are secure, holding the hand rail with me. Then, I brace my arms, press down on my heels and I spin, around and around and around, with you shouting, “faster, faster, faster!” You shriek with joy. Dizzy Yzzie. I stop the trolley and then we spin the other way. You might be sick now, but it’s a risk worth taking, just to hear your laughter: no inhibition, no self-censorship, no socialized constraint, no decorum, no embarrassment, you just laugh, laugh and laugh, loud and free. I love this sound, this intimacy, this shared moment.
You are very unimpressed when I take the stabilizer-wheels off your bike. Now you can’t ride ever again, unless you learn to balance on two wheels. We go to the park and practice. It’s hard and you don’t manage it. You complain. You frown. I am lost for words. It’s hard to explain what to do. Just keep trying. It will come. Maybe next weekend. The following Saturday, another park, another glum face. I persevere, but I prepare myself for failure rather than for success. We try and you fall. We try again and we make more progress. I run along behind you holding the seat to help you balance. This week is so much better than last week. In your face there is a glimmer of hope. We try one more time. I stop running and you don’t notice that I am no longer holding you. You are riding solo. You have done it. I stop and watch you pedal away from me. Happy day! Wait a moment, where are you going? Why don’t you stop? Why don’t you turn around? Where are you going?
I feel sick. I feel lost. I feel helpless and foolish. I was responsible for you and I have lost you, lost sight of you. You have learned to ride a bike and for your first expedition you have cycled off into the far distance and I have no idea where you are. I have failed you. I let go before we had agreed a plan on what to do, when you were able to ride on your own. I start to run after you but what’s the point? You can already ride faster than I can run, and you have a head-start. I don’t know which way you will turn. I don’t know whether you will be able to start again once you stop. I don’t know whether you will find someone who can help you, or whether you will find someone who might harm you. You are lost, and I am lost.
Penelope waited twenty years for Odysseus to return. I waited barely twenty minutes but was equally joyful when you rode back into sight. You were a little breathless but otherwise nonchalant, apparently unaware of the emotional trauma your little adventure across the park had inflicted upon me. All smiles. “Dad, I can ride” you tell me as if I hadn’t worked that out. But you are back, you are safe, and my irresponsibility has gone unpunished. I smile at your delight and my relief. Lucky man.
Looking back, there were plenty of times when things might have turned out worse than they did. All those random events that might have but didn’t happen – accidents or illnesses – the “left tail” as the statisticians would say, the heart-breaking moments that some parents suffer – unlikely but always possible – which we managed to avoid. Happily, we found ourselves located within the better part of the normal distribution. Sometimes behaving responsibly just wouldn’t be, just couldn’t be enough: but in my case, it was. And I felt that burden, like a heavy winter coat draped upon my shoulders. As you grew, day by day, from baby to toddler to child towards teenager, I felt the weight slowly lift. My relief was genuine, but also tinged with concern: not that I desired to cling to my paternal role, to maintain you in a state of dependency, but a growing worry about my ability to help you gradually to assume responsibility for yourself. There is no preparation for becoming a father, whether caring for a new-born baby girl, or preparing your daughter as she stumbles into the age or autonomy. We had come a long way from that first June evening, but we still had plenty far to go.
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