Shout!

Where it came from I wouldn’t like to say. I was tired and I’d been unwell for a few days, but my reaction was, in retrospect, a little over the top.

It didn’t seem to worry S- though. At least not too much. She looked at me wonderingly with those blue eyes as I stood over her and gave her all six barrels.

‘No,’ I said, the decibels rising with every syllable. ‘No, no, no, S-. Don’t do that. DON’T do that. NO!’

What was it that had set me off? Something major, obviously. Something earthshattering. Something that threated to tear the fabric of our family apart.

Well, actually it was that she’d just spilt her drink all over the kitchen table.

For the third time, admittedly. And deliberately, yes. Challengingly, for sure. But for the Lord’s sake it was just a few drops of juice. A miniscule amount of housework. And I’d absolutely blown a gasket.

When I look back I think she was trying to reassure me because when I picked her up from her high chair she clung to me and patted me on the shoulder. ‘Aaahh,’ she said. ‘Aaah’. [Her version of 'all better' or 'come on, old chap, it's not as bad as all that', I think.]

But I was still steaming. A few minutes later, changing her nappy [diaper] ready for her afternoon sleep, I almost boiled over.

Instead I stood up and walked out of the room [shutting the child safety gate behind me, obviously]. I went down the hall and into the kitchen, where I bellowed out my frustration for a good couple of minutes – luckily our neighbours all work during the day, so no one could hear my rather unbecoming vocalisations. Then I went back in and finished her nappy and put her down in the cot.

Later, when I was supposed to be washing the dishes, I stood and stared out of the window, feeling very ashamed of myself.

There’s a school of thought that says adoption gives you the chance to be better parents because you can put theory into practice. You can be more considered. You can apply what the social workers teach you to call a therapeutic approach to your parenting.

I knew that the next time she knocked over her drink [and there would be a next time, of course] I’d have to come up with something slightly less apoplectic. Something that an impartial observer might consider more suited to the occasion. Something – actually almost anything would be better, come to think of it.

One of the hardest things seems to be learning, as the cliche puts it, how to lose a battle so as to win the war.

Last Christmas

One of the strange things about writing a blog is watching it develop a life of its own. That might not always be so comfortable for you, the writer, and there often seems to come a time where you end up re-evaluating the worth of what you’re doing.

I sometimes wonder what S- will make of this blog in the future when she’s old enough to read it. Or when she’s old enough to understand it – which is a different thing altogether.

This train of thought always makes me re-question my motives. I’ve previously discussed my unease at the mining of other people’s lives for the purposes of bloggery [see About this site].

Would S- actually like what’s here? What would she expect to see? A diary of all her doings, all our adventures? Would she want pictures of herself, like you can find in other parenting blogs?

Somehow neither of these alternatives seem right. I can’t be sure whether I think this because S- is adopted and her confidentiality is therefore more important than most kids, or because of my own reserve. Perhaps a mixture of both.

When I started this blog I intended it to be the diary of a new stay-at-home dad. There was, I knew, this extra twist in that our child came to us through adoption.

Now I think it’s all a bit more complicated than that. You can’t separate out all the  important facets that seem to appear when I write things down here: the adoption, S- herself, and my/our experiences. All these things are mixed in together and can only be expressed in that mixed-up way.

It’ll be the same for S- in the future: she’ll have to make sense not only of herself but also about her feelings about G- and I, and in the light of her complex history. We can only do our best and only be as honest as possible.

The above is simply a long-winded way of trying to explain why I feel that a blow-by-blow acount of our first Christmas together would be both unnecessary and wrong – not to mention dull. Instead I want to remember three things.

The initial look of bewilderment on S-’s face when she was surrounded by an absolute mountain of presents from all her new relatives. Other parents, both adoptive and non-adoptive, have since told me that their kids reacted in a similar way. But, yes, I did worry at the time that it was too much for her, that everybody was overdoing it.

The second memory comes from New Year’s Eve. We spent the evening at a friend’s place, and S- slept in a travel cot in a spare bedroom. G- and I crept upstairs at 1.30 in the morning, picked S- up gently and quickly threw all our things together. But it was no use: S- was awake. G- rolled her eyes in mock despair.

‘Mama?’ came a little voice.

‘Yes darling,’ said G-.

‘Da-da?’

‘Yes darling,’ I said.

Knowing that we were there obviously satisfied her, because she gave a funny, contented little chuckle from behind her dummy [soother], waved ‘hello’ at us and settled into G- as we went downstairs, where our friends were waiting to say goodbye. S- peered at L- and R- over G-s shoulder, smiled a shy smile and then waved at them, too. At which point we all broke out into hushed giggles.

The third thing I want to record is not so much a memory as an impression. While we’re together S- and I have a good time, I like to think. But watching G- and S- really made me appreciate my limitations. The talking, the games, the laughter and the natural bonding that go on between my wife and daughter make my efforts pale. The activities I set out on always seem a bit regimented, a bit static, in comparison with the fun and joy that G- and S- share.

I think I understand ‘in my bones’ now why children need a mother [it's easy to say we understand, to think it in our heads]. Kids need a dad, too, of course they do. But the mother is the primary, the centre. How can it be otherwise?