Children

I never imagined I’d father a child. Now I have two.

What happened?

I married when I was very young (and probably rather stupid), but my wife and I agreed that we saw no point in bringing more children into the world. This was in the mid 1980s. It seemed sensible. It probably was.

We parted in the late 90s, still childless, which was a blessing, I suppose. It made the parting relatively easy. Nevertheless, I was heartbroken, and for several months I saw no future.

I quit my job, which was essentially pushing paper around month after month, and set off with a backpack and little idea of what to do with what remained of my life.

One day, there I was, sat in the concourse of a railway station somewhere in Malaysia, killing time waiting for a connection. There were several noisy kids messing around, playing happily in the open space in front of the bench on which I had settled. I had a moment, an epiphany, if you like. I sat and watched the children playing. It was wonderful. Until that moment, I had maintained an irrational loathing of the little bastards. Not those particular Malaysian kids, but all kids. Previously, quick as a flash, I’d have upped and offed, to remove the sight and sound of the little sods from my senses. Imagine how I used to cope on entering an aeroplane to find that I was to be sat close to a child, or more commonly, several children. Now, there I was, enjoying the sight and sound of kids being kids. It was the precise moment when I realised that perhaps what I needed was a reason to get up every morning.

Fast forward some twenty years. This very morning, I was sat with my daughter on my lap. There were man tears, as there have been on countless occasions since she came into my world. Sorry, there are several gaps in this story to be filled, but she’s literally just come down to say “good night daddy!”, fixing me with those huge, dark eyes. I never saw anything quite so beautiful.

Come back tomorrow and I’ll try to compose both myself and some meaningful thoughts on my experience thus far.