The Shoulderback years
You climbed into our bed, at about 6.30 am, not too bad for you. ‘Yipee, I’m four’, you announced.
Like a shark you are always forward and in the moment, never sentimental, but I am feeling it. Four! Already?
You will go to school in September, and I will take your picture next to the front door no doubt, but this fact seems impossible. You are just too new and your skin too soft; your skills at opening things too basic; and you speak in a whisper when you meet new people. How can you be ready for the world?
Life is finite and time is precious and sacred. These are the lessons you have taught me. This is trite and obvious. You will figure this out for yourself, but maybe you will learn and forget and learn again, if you are anything like your old Dad here. But I want to tell you something about how it has been so far.
You are at nursery between Monday and Wednesday. You used to see a childminder on Thursdays, but she retired. Your mam has you on Fridays and I do Daddy Thursdays.
Usually, this involves swimming, sometimes to a not-convenient location because you want to take the train to somewhere further away. You love trains. I took you swimming on the Saturday before your birthday, and before we made it down the five steps from the front door, the call came.
‘Shoulder ride! Shoulder ride!’
It is a demand. You love a shoulder ride, it has been our default mode of transport for a while. I don’t know exactly when they started, these shoulderback years. But I know that they are running out. And this hits me hard in my soul.
You are getting heavy now. Technically, you should be walking. But I am soft.
When someone from Time Team discovers my skeleton in a few centuries' time, there will be confusion. ‘His spine indicates he didn’t carry much for decades and then became a manual labourer carrying heavy loads. Perhaps he fell on hard times?’ they might speculate.
And in some ways, I have fallen on hard times. I can’t afford the gym even if I had the time, I tell people, so the shoulder ride is a logical way to keep fit. It’s the only upper body exercise I get.
Maybe there won’t be a Time Team in the centuries ahead?
The world is confusing. You have lived through a pandemic that some people denied, even as they died from the thing they said wasn’t true. I have a dayjob involving health disinformation (I am against it), and I still find this hard to compute.
Armed conflicts simmer elsewhere: children your age are being killed by machines explicitly designed and distributed with death in mind by apparently otherwise clever people. Or else of diseases that should have died out. Now there is war in Europe; with a nuclear edge to it.
In dark moments, of course, it feels like perhaps nuclear annihilation is the best thing for us as a species, given we are doing so many terrible things to destroy our home planet, and can’t seem to change our ways. Some people deny this problem too.
I digress. Optimistically, I assume that civilisation lasts long enough for you to be able to read this. Because I want to tell you about this time now.
I think of the five things you will no longer do soon. Like crumple with uncomplicated delight when I nibble your ear you and tell you I am going to eat you for breakfast or introduce the character of Dr Fattimus, a posh gentleman who blows raspberries at bath time. You won’t want to have a bath with me soon, Ira.
Or pronounce Hula Hoops, oola oops. Or demand to hold my hand, urgently, when the bus starts. Or ask: “Do you know what shivitty means?” Before explaining: “It’s when your feet get really cold Daddy.”
Some things are already gone: you don’t say bapple or manana any more. Unless you are doing your baby voice which is the other thing you often do with new people. It is a bit embarrassing: he can speak properly, I want to explain. He’s pretending. It’s also quite funny.
On the way to swimming, you grabbed my held tightly on the bus when it started. You always do this and I know that it is right and proper that you will not do this soon. But it is one of the things I like. Out of nothing you say, “Daddy, you’re my best friend”.
I know that this is temporary; you announce that other people will be your best friend and this includes the cat with whom your relationship is tempestuous. And you may ‘put Daddy in jail’ soon. But for now, I just enjoy the moment.
“The next stop is Princess Present” you shout, instead of Prince’s Crescent. Other people laugh. Your voice is loud.
You’ve dabbled with ‘Dad’ a couple of times, and for a while you called me by my Christian name, just like Bart Simpson did for a while. But I’m enjoying ‘Daddy’ for now.
Your sense of mischief is strong. Is it your personality or just the development phase you are in? Perhaps it’s the toddler in you, rather than something about your personality that makes you steal my slipper and throw it into the sink, and steal my hat to hide it behind the sofa.
Although, surely some of it is you. Last week I asked you to say the magic word, and you said “Thank you,” sweetly. Then again “Thank you smelly bum bum daddy”, mixing correctness with insolence. You are bloody annoying but you have a good sense of humour.
I said there’d be five things, but I’ve gone on. There are five thousand things, and I should have written all of them down. But I was too tired. This is your fault.
You come in during the night; until very recently the rattle of the vehicle you were holding and had gone to bed with would precede you. You are a wriggled, Ira. You kick, kick, kick. Then you’d grab my head, or your Mam’s, and cling on. You ask for a ‘head cuddle’, which is cute but annoying. Once, you smacked me in the eye, out of nothing. You were asleep, but even so. It felt like proper attack.
One pupil massive, like a three day rave, and the other perfectly normal which made the weird eye all the more weird. The optician, who I happened to see that day, through the good eye, said I should have a special appointment. The receptionist giggled. No permanent damage. Cost me £35.
You are a child of the pandemic. There will be thousands upon hundreds of words written about this means: the lockdown generation.
I don’t know how you will feel about these years. There tends to be nostalgia, but it was the best/worst of times. Six million people died and you had to stay in a lot; the long term effects are a mystery. There was anger, denial, blame.
I lost work. My job involved travelling the world which was suddenly frowned upon. I’d just written my first proper book, which not many people bought. It was a bad time to launch a book extolling the virtues of cycling in China. I should have been working overtime, but contracts were being cancelled. So we lost money but gained time with each other.
There was a particular week, a couple of years ago now. The heatwave. Your stepsister had to go to hospital with an obscure but serious infection. Your mother had to stay with her; they will tell you that particular horror story one, of windows that could not be opened, because of Covid, despite the heat.
But at home, in the Boy’s House, spirits were up. All I had to do was feed us, keep us jolly, and not set fire to anything.
By the time you have read this you will realise that your Mam is a much better parent than me. Less chaotic, more consistent.
None of us wore shirts at all that week, including the stepbrother you idolise. At this point you called him Didi still, I think. I thought they might like you a bit, but see you as a rival. In fact they love you, and fought over who got to cuddle you first.
We worried about your stepsister in hospital. We drove the van to the beach but I couldn’t find a parking space. The air on the horizon distorted by the heat in ways I could not explain to you. We were allowed out by then, after being cooped up, so every parking spot was taken. So we drove around and around and couldn’t find a spot and it was starting to be too late for the beach anyway because I’d been late with your cooking teas.
So I drove home, feeling a bit like a failure. Another day of mediocre childcare. And we sat on the stoop, the five steps you demand to be carried down. You and Georgie had an ice lolly each and I had a San Miguel with a slice of lime, pretending we are on holiday.
Big Dave from two doors down came over to say hello. He is a lovely guy, aged 87 and he has cancer, so by the time you start going to nightclubs realistically, he might not joining us. ‘I was always so busy, when my kids were your age he explains. I love seeing you all out. Enjoy the moment. They grow up so quick.’
That moment stuck with me. For us, the pandemic was nothing compared to some of the suffering in the world. We got to hang out.
Ira, you ask so many questions. We once timed the number of questions you asked on a 15 minute bus journey. The answer was forty something. Your questions are frequent, and relentless, often complex. What’s a banana made of?
I tell people you could be used in interrogations because your questions come so thick and fast. It is hard to keep up, and therefore impossible to answer anything other than honestly. Any inconsistencies are rooted out, like when you asked the name for every car on our street, and I started calling them Bob, or Mick when I couldn’t recognise the make of car, and you remembered all of them, correcting my mistakes.
Anyway; the day before your birthday we took you to London. Hamleys. A man in a bear costume towered over you, asking you if you wanted to ring the bell to open the shop, and you were shy and held on tight to my hand. Your face is something I will always remember — joy, apprehension, wonder— even though I have my doubts about capitalism in its current form. You choose a Lego helicopter for your birthday present. It cost £25; or as you would have said until very recently, ‘twenty-five money’.
On the way back you ask the ticket collector about trains. Does this train have pistons? Are there toilets on this train? How does the train stay on the track? He is kind and patient, and you charm him with your relentless thirst for more information.
You are not a sporty kid, so far; we gave you a child’s basketball, and instead of actually bouncing it you place it on the floor at regular intervals, like a rugby touchdown.
When I take you swimming your games typically involve a narrative arc rather than horseplay. We play ‘edge trains’, where you pull yourself around the edge of the pool, as other kids jump and splash. You explain that the handrail up the steps, where you like to hang out, is a monorail.
I spin you round and you like that, but we get told off when I give you the shoulder ride you demand in the pool. This is apparently dangerous.
It is strange to be told off as an adult. I work from home, so it’s good to cross swords with an authority figure. Why aren’t we allowed shoulder rides in the swimming pool? You ask. “Because of litigious US corporate culture leading to a seeping risk averseness which has seeped into the fabric of everyday British life, despite the populist press blaming this on EU rules or the barmy councils,” I can tell you now.
In the future there will be a humourless droid on the tall chair, no doubt, but for now it is quite comforting to be told off by an actual human authority figure although we escape the whistle. I remember getting told off by the man on the chair with my Dad, so it feels like something is being passed down.
I don’t suppose you will ever make it to Stokesley Baths, where I would swim at your age. It is hundreds of miles away. I came south to follow opportunity. They don’t even call it ‘going to the baths’ here; this sounds northern and funny to people.
You are not very northern, Ira. You say barth, not bath. You even say gewl for girl. I don’t think you know what a lass is. I want you to remember your roots, and I try in vain to get you to be more northern. I read your bedtime story in a northern accent, but you ask me to do it in a normal voice.
I once asked you: “What do you fancy for tea, son”. Your answer became legend. “Rooibos, Daddy.”
On the way back from swimming, you asked, out of nowhere:
‘Where’s your daddy?’
I explain that he died, and inevitably, you have many follow up questions. Did your Dad love you, you ask. Did your dad cuddle you? He asks. Did your dad have hair?
My Dad, your granddad, died within 48 hours after scooping you up in his big, generations of ‘not-so-many-pianists-but-lots-of-working-in-the-steel-and fishing-industries-in-the-family’ hands.
It was just a complete surprise. Life can end suddenly. My mother, who would have been your other granny, didn’t even get to meet you; she died far too young from cancer, having spent much of her life looking after children. I cannot think of two people who would have enjoyed seeing you grow up more. I’ll tell you more about them one day.
The point is that I had four grandparents at your age, and until I was five lived on a street where we were in and out of each other’s houses or playing in the street all of the time. Auntie Fiona isn’t a real auntie, she was our next door neighbour and my mam’s best friend. The opposite is true for you: it’s more intense. Possibly due to the lockdown, we don’t hang out much with other people your age. Too many cars mean we can’t just let you play out.
(You go to soft play instead. I am a connoisseur of these establishments. I could write for Soft Play magazine, albeit the title might cause confusion. You quite like Leo’s Play Den in Eastbourne, but I think the balls in the ball pool are a bit grubby, and prefer the high octane thrill of the slides at Palace Play on the pier)
I don’t really know many other parents with kids your age, and there are so many people who you have not met; our circles are smaller ‘because of the virus’, to use one of your catchphrases.
I suspect we can be happier when we audit what we have rather than the things we don’t anyway. Your one grandparent does a great job. You have uncles and aunties and cousins who love you.
A maternity ward was bombed on the day of your birthday and the way I feel about that has become linked with the way I feel about you, Ira.
Life is finite and time is precious and sacred. These are the lessons you have taught me. The Shoulderback Years will make way for something else. I will try my hardest not to hold you back and to let you fly. I hope you remember them, one day, and how happy we all were, for most of the time.
