There be dragons

Fatherhood is fear and joy, bound up with meaning and purpose

I have come to fatherhood late, at an age when wisdom is traditionally supposed to emerge and the self should be well settled. That is not the case for me. More often than not, I am rendered dumb with the ache of wanting to be more, to be better, to lift my daughters over the snares that have held me back. People tell you that children change everything, and you roll your eyes and scoff and snark, but when a piece of you is out in the world, out of sight and vulnerable to fate, every abstract calculation you’ve ever made means precisely squat.

One of my flaws, which is also paradoxically one of my strengths, is sentimentality. The flawed aspect is the tendency to wallow in strong feelings, particularly sadness. The strength is in the depth of feeling I can access when I feel strong enough to reach for it. When each of my daughters was born, this primordial well began to bubble much closer to the surface.

I know I’m just describing a variation of what billions of other fathers experience when children change their lives forever, but for me, for us, it is something so deeply elemental that I cannot help trying to knit it into words. In a world where we are increasingly cut off from the reality of our corporeal existence, our children can become a focal point for everything that matters, for every choice we make.

The most surprising aspect of fatherhood, for me, has been the degree to which all children are now more real to me - more relevant and concrete. In the second season of Breaking Bad, the episode titled “Peekaboo” revolves around Jesse Pinkman waiting for two meth heads to return to their pigsty of a house so that he can confront them over some stolen drugs. As he sits nervously on the couch, a small boy, perhaps 5 years old, appears from another room in the house. He turns on the TV and tells Jesse he is “hungwy”.

Now, I’m well aware that this is blatant heartstring-pulling, and of a piece with that grand and tragic parable of man’s selfish nature, but the first time I watched that scene it was merely affecting. The second time I watched it, not long after the birth of my first daughter, it was physically painful. That thin, filthy little boy was suddenly real to me in a way he had not been before, and his plight felt unbearably sad.

Children, paradoxically, make you aware of your own mortality. This awareness was amplified greatly by the loss of a close friend just after my eldest daughter’s second birthday. This has spurred me to make healthy and positive changes in my life, but it is also a burden you can never put down. I do not resent its weight; in fact, I welcome it as indivisible from purpose and meaning, but weight it is.

I am a fearful person, and often hew to loss avoidance at the expense of opportunity. I started my own business, now entering its second successful decade, so I must admit that I’m not entirely the miserable mollusc I sometimes feel myself to be. I also overcame addiction and started again at age 36, with very little to my name. But there is no way to be truly at peace when the creature that you helped to make, the creature that you love in a way that utterly transcends your selfish nature, is out there exposed to the pitiless universe.

This is waxing melodramatic, I know, but I must persist. I remember, more than a decade ago, reading a tweet to the effect that having children should be a prerequisite for being allowed to vote. While I disagree with that on principle, both then and now, I now grasp its emotional and ethical weight. The childless are not wrong, and do not deserve to be second-class citizens, but they do not have the same stake in the future that we have.

I have chosen my burdens, and I am glad of them. They brought a purpose and meaning to my life that I did not know was lacking. In this post-post-modern, transhumanist age, that kind of admission elicits guffaws of scorn from the denizens of Bluesky. How pathetic, how embarrassing, how shameful to admit that you need children to give you a reason to live. And yet they do.

Given my place in the world - steady, middle-class, nestled in suburban Cape Town and surrounded by a loving extended family - all of this neurotic wallowing is a bit silly. Alas, I cannot help it. As a student of history (my humble brag is that I’ve listened to all 136 hours of The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire), I know that the tides of that history can quickly sweep everything away and drown you in the sheer brute reality of change.

And so I grapple with that. I feel it, I see it. I know it may not happen; I may continue on this incredibly lucky streak. I do not dwell upon it every hour of every day, but it is always there. Haruki Murakami wrote that “everyone, deep in their hearts, is waiting for the end of the world to come”. This beautifully encapsulates both the longing and the dread that I feel.

They’re beautiful, my girls, inside and out. Like their mother, they have a kindness of spirit baked into their very bones. They give me so much joy. I work from home, and so I am treated, often daily, to tiny slivers of peak experience. Ruby playing peekaboo for the first time, Charlie dancing like Elaine from Seinfeld. Charlie Nose and Ruby Bear. My blood, my bone, the very best of me. No burden is so heavy as to counterbalance even a tenth of that joy.

Part of my reason for starting this substack is to finally be fully honest in my writing. I’ve always been good at it, but in most cases remote, mannered, abstracted. There’s still room for that kind of writing in my life. It has its place, its value, its utility. But now, for better or for worse, I am resolved to let the real stuff out. When I write something, particularly a poem, and it makes me cry, it’s usually a sign that it’s worth other people reading it. Or it’s just self-indulgent, but who cares, and fuck it. I’m tired of being afraid. And so, with your kind indulgence, Dear Reader, here it is.

THERE BE DRAGONS

You are one of billions, child,
a legion, locusts, some say a plague,
our weight of wanting crushing all,
and yet you are my miracle, entire.

We are too many, we are too much,
we grind whole mountains into dust.
How can you stand against this tide?
And yet you do, on sturdy little legs.

We are all lost, we are all afraid,
yet when your eyes beam gamma joy,
thew and marrow feel the ache
of deepest time, of walkabout.

I dream sometimes of war,
of slogging through the frozen mud,
of carrying you upon my back,
of trading limb or life for one more chance

How terrible it is to love,
to bet life on a lonely, wandering rock,
to hope, an ember in a shaking hand,
to hold my breath, to never rest again.

I am so flawed, my little one,
so tangled up in fear.
I cannot sing the ancient songs,
but speak of clan, of oath, of place

And so I scoop you up,
warm as blood,
wriggling like a pup,
your every part a part of mine,
and know that, finally,
I am home.