The moment came a few months ago, when I was struggling to dress my young son. He was barely 12 months old as I squeezed his head through the narrow opening of an infant-sized Munster rugby jersey. He bawled inconsolably. Then came the miniature navy shorts. More tears. Finally, the socks.
By the time I took my phone out to take a picture, he glowered at me with glassy, red-rimmed eyes. In that moment I realised that parenting is a strange tug of war between the noble and the narcissistic.
You try to guide your son into the world. But you inevitably project your own self-interests against his burgeoning will. At a time when he is acquiring life skills at a blurry pace, I wonder if my responsibility is to help shape him – or to stand back and let him figure his own way.
Against that backdrop, sons+fathers, an anthology in aid of the Irish Hospice Foundation, with contributions from artists, writers, politicians and entrepreneurs, makes for both inspiring and terrifying reading.
It describes itself as a book that celebrates the special relationship between boys and their dads. But it’s much more than that. These are moving snapshots of sons in rebellion against their fathers, and in thrall to them; young men trying to be better than the fathers who let them down – and living out the destinies scripted for them. The memories for some are filled with mutual affection and ease; for others they are tense and raw.
In all, 56 international sons and fathers have contributed to this beautifully designed, coffee-table collection. It’s a flotilla of high-profile high achievers: Bono, Cillian Murphy, Bill Clinton, Colin Farrell, Gabriel Byrne, Paul McCartney.
Absent, distant
The imprint of absent or neglectful fathers is conspicuous among many. It may also explain some of their vaulting ambition.
Bill Clinton’s father died three months before he was born, leaving the future president with the feeling that he had to make up for the life he should have had.
“When I became a father myself, I tried to remember that it was my most important job, one I wanted to do well for the daughter I adore and a lost father who was denied life’s greatest gift,” he writes.
In a chilling contribution, writer and journalist Dylan Jones describes the abuse he experienced at the hands of his father. “He hit me so much I would cower whenever he entered the room. He hit me so much that at the age of ten I stammered so much that I found it impossible to say my own name,” Jones writes.
Even for those who were close to their fathers, the scars of being sent to boarding school emerge in fragments of childhood memories; many are achingly sad. Paul McGuinness describes being sent to Clongowes and kissing his father goodbye halfway down the long driveway.
“For the next few days, never having been so devastated by loneliness before, I would visit the place where his tyres had flattened the grass.”
James Dearden, the film-maker, revisits the dreaded countdown to 5pm on the Sundays when his parents visited his boarding school. His father would throw a cricket ball up high into the sky for him to catch.
“I don’t think I will ever feel as close to anyone as I did to my father , or the recipient of such unconditional love . . . part of me will forever be that small boy, waiting for the cricket ball to come back down from the sky.”
Lighter moments
There are lighter and poignant moments as well. Joe O’Connor writes of seeing his son at his first school disco and “wishing I could hold him, one last time/ Or wishing I could join him/On air guitar”.
Larry Mullen jnr, who says he has endless stories about his father’s quirks and funny moments, includes an email from his father. It both chides and congratulates him for his speech at the Golden Globe Awards.
“Much of it was over my head, and not helped by the slobbering acceptance speeches. At least that cannot be said of the contributions from U2,” wrote his father, Laurence snr, who died last month.
There is evidence, too, of the special potential for misunderstanding between fathers and son. Men, after all, aren’t socialised to express their feelings, to speak their hearts or to talk it out. Their unconditional love is often expressed in the most strangled and obscure of ways.
Following his father’s death, Jones describes finding clipping after clipping of all his published work, carefully glued into A4 booklets, each one with a date scribbled in his father’s spidery writing.
“All I could do was stare,” he writes. “He used to berate me for not achieving what he thought I was capable of . . . but I could tell he was secretly proud of me; he just couldn’t find a way to tell me.”
Carl O’Brien is Chief Reporter
