A DAD'S LIFE:School's return brings with it a silver lining, writes ADAM BROPHY
AND THEY’RE back to school. I have very mixed feelings about this week. Part of me is dancing a jig as they pull on their elastic ties and head off into the sunrise, rejoicing at a solid six hours where we don’t have to provide any entertainment, nourishment or dubious moral guidance. The other part is railing at the sky, screaming at the sun: “Where the hell were you the past eight weeks?”
Summer can’t be over because it hasn’t started yet. I’m convinced I’ll wake any moment now and it’ll be June, it’ll be warm and we’ll all go sit in the garden. I’m still waiting for the opportunity to unleash these skinny white legs on an unprepared public, but it’s not gonna happen this year. Ach, September is on us, send on the floods and sleet.
Fleeting memories of summer. Discovering Murphy’s ice cream, Irish-made and brilliant. Can make you forget the fact that you’re licking it in sub-Arctic conditions and waiting for a break in the clouds.
Kids’ bedtimes slipping inexorably towards midnight. For a few weeks you make an effort to enforce a schedule in the hope that they’ll respond to your insistence on normality. They won’t. They are gripped by no-school fever and expect to run till they drop. Eventually that’s what you allow, scoop them up wherever they fall and prepare for the following day’s perpetual motion. This week you have to inflict a curfew and they don’t like it. Cue the entrance of Children of the Corn in many houses, for 10 days at least.
Your house being a feeding post and dosshouse for every pre-teen in the county. For two months now I have strolled from work desk to living room and kitchen and encountered random strange kids along the way. “And you are?” I ask.
Most of the time they are schoolfriends or relatives (it’s always a bit embarrassing when you don’t recognise those) but a number of AN Others have wandered through on occasion, drawn by the noise and the incessant conveyor belt of toast. I quite liked this mayhem as it quelled the “what are we going to do today?” question and absolved me of most responsibility. Safety in numbers I figured, and any accidents could be attributed to the randomers.
Camping. After years of hounding me the missus had her way and we found ourselves in Fossa Caravan Park in Kerry. All my Father Ted camping preconceptions went out the window as I realised I would not have to file a strongly worded letter about my human rights being denied under the terms of the Geneva Convention. This was a recession reality that worked out nicely. Okay, if we can make Monte Carlo next year, that’s where we’ll be heading, but the kids would probably plump for Fossa over that. Thank God I pay them no attention.
Trampolining. About three years ago a friend advised me to buy the brats a trampoline, claiming they’d never tire of it. Balls to that, I thought, no sooner would I have it up (after 12 hours of fiddling in mounting frustration with stretchy metal bits – God’s honest truth) than they would want monkey bars instead. Not the case. Rain or shine, both they and their comrades seemed to have bounced for an average of eight hours a day. They started taking their meals out there, bouncing in the dark, bouncing to sleep. Marvellous invention.
Only now we must leave the trampolining, and camping, and Murphy’s ice cream eating behind and return to structure. Structure is very easy to disentangle, somewhat more difficult to restore. The thought of dragging them out of bed at 7.30am and not losing the head with them at eight, when I return to their bedrooms and find them staring vacantly at the wall still in pyjamas, fills me with fear. The return to the monotonous demands of the school timetable is crushing.
“Do your homework. Have you done your homework? Do it now! Why haven’t you done your homework? Put down the dog. No, look, seriously put down the dog, you started to get your books out of your bag and you got distracted by a shiny wrapper. I told you to put down the dog, put him down. Do your homework. Now! Don’t make me get medieval on you.”
The next morning: “what do you mean we can’t leave for school yet? You haven’t done your homework, have you?” But they’ll be gone for six hours every day. Silver linings.