It is August and we are driving to Heathrow. In less than an hour, you will depart through the security gate – with three other young people – heading for Manzini in Swaziland, via Addis Ababa and Johannesburg. You will be gone for year, although we will come and visit you in eight months. In the last eighteen years we have never been apart for more than two weeks. I am going to miss you greatly, but I do not want to tell you this.
For, this is your day: the culmination of a year of dreaming, planning, fund-raising, waiting and waiting and more waiting, with a growing sense of anticipation. It is a big adventure, a rite of passage, a declaration of independence, a crossing of the threshold from adolescence into adulthood. It is your day, not mine. At the airport I buy £50 worth of Rand, so you have some brass in pocket when you land. In your bag you have a letter that I have written to you, which you read – I later discover – while the plane taxis out to the runway to take-off. It tells you how proud I am of you, and that I think about you every day.
The day after you depart is one of mixed emotion for me. I know that without my support and encouragement it would have been difficult for you to spend a year away in Africa. I worry about the increased risks you face in an environment very different to Hackney. You are street-wise, but where you are going the streets are different. And, don’t forget, because I told you several times, the number and severity of traffic accidents is one of the biggest differences. Yet, for all that, I know that this is what you want to do, and I admire your courage and your commitment. You will have a great time and you will do some good in this world. For that I cannot but be happy.
Those difficult early-teenage years are now behind us. At sixteen, after under-performing in you GCSE exams, you changed schools and started again. You made some new friends, worked harder, applied successfully to the University of Manchester, deferring your place for a year to allow you to volunteer at a project in Southern Africa that looks after children who are orphaned, abandoned, or simply in need of care. You had (mostly) stopped picking pointless fights with me and I had (mostly) stopped imposing pointless rules on you.
Our relationship was not without its frustrations: there were still irritations and misunderstandings on both sides. You wanted to grab more freedom and I wanted you to show greater responsibility. But we kept talking to each other, kept cooking and eating together, kept faith in each other. Most importantly of all, we were able to joke together. We maintained a common bond in the humour of the absurd, of the bizarre, of the eccentric. We had progressed from Harpo Marx in A Night at the Opera, via Johnny Depp in Pirates of the Caribbean, to Leonardo di Caprio in The Wolf on Wall Street. We laughed at them all, and we laughed together.
I have a vivid memory of when you were very young, maybe only a year old. I had taken you out of the bath and you were wrapped in a big towel, slowly being dried and rubbed with oil and cream, before being dressed in a sleep-suit and put to bed. I wished that I could sing in tune, even just a little. I would have sung you a lullaby: Summertime, and the livin’ is easy / Fish are jumpin’ and the cotton is high / Your daddy’s rich and your mama’s good-looking / So hush, little baby, don’t you cry. But I knew well the strict limitations of my vocal skills: I’d better stick to pulling funny faces at you instead.
We play a game. I make a series of actions, touching my ears, my eyes, my nose, my lips, my chin and the top of my head. I try to get you to copy me. I repeat the series in the same order several times. Then I make a deliberate mistake and touch my chin when I should have touched my nose. I pull a face, roll my eyes, shrug my shoulders and look forlorn. Then I try again. I repeat the series correctly three times and then make the same deliberate mistake again. You giggle. You smile at me. You seem to find my clowning funny. You have been waiting and watching for the error. I can’t sing but I can make you laugh, and that’s good enough for me.
Then you try to copy me. You touch your ear, your nose, your lips, the top of your head. You repeat the series. Then the third time, you go wrong and touch your chin. You look puzzled. For a split second I’m not quite sure what has happened: have you lost the thread of your actions, and forgotten the pattern? Were you not able to remember the sequence for a third time? Before I could organize this thought in my mind, you shrugged your shoulders and burst out laughing. And how you laughed: peals of uninhibited, uncontrolled hilarity. Pure physical delight.
The human animal: a thinker, a talker, a maker of tools, but most importantly, a laugher. And I want to laugh with you, but I am in shock because I realize that you have not only copied my action series, you have also copied my deliberate mistake. Crazy girl! You are already asserting your equal standing in our relationship: anything you can do I can do too. I laugh – we laugh together – but I also want to cry with joy that we have shared this moment of mimicry and intimacy, that I made you laugh, and you repaid me by making me laugh too.
Last month you came to visit me on my birthday. I cooked for you. This is more challenging than it once was, because of your commitment to veganism. You know that I am sceptical of your rationale, but respectful of your decision. And I am glad that it has made you more interested, both in cooking and in the politics of food. I make us a selection of dishes, all with a Middle-Eastern theme, and they mostly work out. We eat well, and I drink well too. Later we drop into a pub in Holborn to watch England play rugby. You queue to buy me beer and we enjoy the game together. Then we head to Covent Garden: you have bought two tickets for us to see an evening of contemporary dance as part of my birthday present (along with a small succulent, an essential addition to my new flat in E2). The performance is good, with striking music, simple but effective set design and exciting modern choreography. We had a great day together and I will remember it for a long time.
You are now in your early twenties and we are starting to make friends. It is not always easy. Converting a relationship between parent and child into a relationship between two adults requires us both to reconsider our roles, our power to hurt, our knowledge of each other’s weaknesses, our propensity to slip into standard or stereotypical roles. You will always be my daughter, but I do not want you to be only my daughter: I also want you to be my friend.
I remember someone asking me, when you were around ten or eleven, did I mind that my only child was a girl? I wasn’t quite sure what to make of this question. I didn’t think that I would have treated a son any differently from the way I treated you. I have sometimes wished that you were more tidy, more timely, more Tottenham; but I have never wished that you were a boy. My only regret, less for me than for you, which I have become aware of in writing these texts about you, is that you will never know first-hand what it feels like to be a father to a daughter. For me it has been the best experience.
It truly is, Mark. It is incomparable. Writing this from the airport in New Orleans, sitting next to my son. We’re wearing matching fedoras.