I have been a single male parent of my daughter for the past seven years.
When we decided to separate we decided to be very adult and have as an harmonious parting as was practicable under the circumstances. The circumstances were fairly juicy and involved another woman; not, I might add, to my advantage.
However, during this harmonious parting, we had to have the usual ‘who gets what’ scenario and, under this heading,crass as it may seem, comes my beloved daughter.
Now,under English law,it is virtualy impossible for a father to gain custody of his child(ren). The mother needs to be a convicted axe murderer awaiting execution or higher status before a father is granted custody.
To be fair, children are,as a rule much better off with their mother than their normally errant father, but God bless all males(of any species) who have the primevil instinct to mate with as many females as possible to propagate the species – its in our genes.
I digress. Due to our respective employment situations,it became abundantly clear that I was in a far more flexible position to be able to cope with looking after the to-ing and fro-ing and general maintenance required to bring a ten year old girl through the mill of life.
Years eleven, twelve and thirteen passed with only minor irritations; we had fun, horses, rodents(various and many) dogs(x2, still here) all maintenance and husbandry performed by the writer I might add, as well as washing, ironing, cooking, taxiing,dentists, doctors,cadets,athletic meetings,badminton et.al;
Year fourteen. Some sort of green fog descended upon us. All communication was reduced to a series of grunts or sign language. Comments like ‘Its not fair’, ‘You don’t understand’,and worse, far worse.
Year fifteen. More of the same only we had to re-visit the sex thing which we had to have at fourteen but was dismissed as me not knowing anything. I did calmly explain that knowing nothing implies a blank mind and that my mind was far from blank and that my primary goal in life is to ensure my daughter has the best posible upbringing which does require some modicom of knowledge.
Years sixteen and seventeen. Well, she is a woman now. God knows, I wasn’t a man at her age. She is an absolute stunner and I am very proud to see her young man collect her at the door and escort her to his car. I hope they have fun – lots of it.
I can only hope that all the arguments that we have had over the past few years will lodge in her brain and lead her eventually to the realisation that I was never trying to control, but merely to guide.
I have never received a more poignant or significant compliment than my daughter made to me when her first beau came to the door.
As they were walking towards his car,she turned and said ‘Thanks Dad’
AS a post script – when
