“Will we go and see the horses?” my Dad asked. My uncle threw him a conspiratorial smile and said “Aye, we should, indeed”. They grabbed their coats and headed for the door, giggling like school children as they got into my uncle’s car.
I raced behind them “Can I go
too?” I asked. “I love horses”. My Dad and uncle looked at each other and I
could tell their enthusiasm to get going overruled their desire to argue. I was
told to jump into the back seat and we set off.
I was twelve and we were on a
family holiday to the part of Ireland that my Dad grew up in. I spent that
afternoon in the company of these two men and let’s just say we didn’t see any
horses. We transversed the windy roads of South Wexford, stopping off at thatched
roofed country pubs that could have fallen out of a 1950’s Hollywood movie that
presented a romanticised version of what Ireland should look like.
I consumed more Coca Cola than is
good for a growing boy and ate about ten packets of Tayto crisps. It wasn’t
great for my stomach but years later I still remember that afternoon because of
the easy blanket of love that embraced me. My Dad was having one of those
afternoons that I now treasure. The chance to share a few beers with somebody
who makes you laugh. But he was comfortable enough to let me sit in and listen
to their grown-up conversations.
They talked about Hurling and
Wexford’s chances in that year’s Championship. My Dad grew up in the
countryside and moved to town when he met my Mother. He loved nothing better
than to return to his earlier life of fertiliser and turnips and the affect of
rain on that year’s harvest. For two weeks every year he could slip back into
his earlier life and leave behind the pressures of work and helping to raise
five unruly children.
I only have one child and she’s
now the age I was when I went on that odyssey in South Wexford. Like all Dads,
I look back on my own childhood and the experience I had with my own father. I sometimes
get frustrated with my daughter and ache for some free time. A chance to get
away from the demands of parenting. I wonder if my Dad felt like that too. He
worked long hours when I was growing up. He said this was to earn as much
overtime as possible as providing for seven people wasn’t an easy task. My
Mother claimed it was to get away from parenting and leave it all to her. With
the benefit of hindsight and my own experience, I think it was probably a
combination of both.
But when my Dad was at home, he
was fully invested in his kids. Memory is of course selective. We can choose to
only remember the good times if it suits our narrative and it’s also not linear
and continuous. I remember events from my childhood but don’t know when they
happened or how often.
I can remember my Dad covering
our school books with wall paper at the start of the new school year, putting
up Christmas decorations on the 8th December in the exact same way
every year, attaching an old piece of carpet to my bicycle seat when the
original wore out, taking me around the sports shops of our hometown looking
for an Arsenal sticker after my Mother had mistakenly brought back a bag with
Liverpool FC on the front.
I often fret about whether I’m
being as good a Dad as my father was. There are certainly things I do that he
never had to. I take my daughter to cricket every Saturday. I had to make my
own way to football when I was twelve and we would have been mortified to have
a parent watching. I spend a lot of time each week driving around town to
sewing classes or girl guides. Much of this is due to living in a big city as
opposed to the medium sized town I grew up. When I was young, I could reach
everywhere on foot or on bike. My daughter would struggle with this as her
activities are spread across a wide area. But it’s also due to this generation
being much more cautious than the one I grew up in. Despite the modern world
being statistically safer, nobody would dream of letting a 12 year walk home
alone.
But I can’t help feeling that
we’re softer too. My parents would regularly make the point that we had it easy
as kids compared to their generation. My Dad was old enough to remember World War
Two and the rationing that it imposed. He talked about going to school barefoot
and being sent out to work full time at fourteen.
I find myself feeling the same
about my daughter. That things are so much easier for her. We didn’t have the internet,
Nexflix or mobile phones. We weren’t wealthy enough to go on exotic holidays.
My daughter had travelled across the world four times before she was six.
But the truth is that life is
just as hard for her as it was for me, because we can only deal with what is in
front of us. She has a far better material life than I had but I didn’t have to
deal with climate change, internet weirdos and the pressures that young girls
face in the modern world.
I hope that in a few years time, when she stumbles across this blog that she’ll know that I did my best. I’ll try but never quite manage to do as good a job as my Dad. But I hope one day my daughter will look back to when she was twelve and think of a day when she was smothered in love. Although I doubt if that day will involve horses either.
