There’s something about Father’s Day earlier this month that seems ever so slightly more important than my own birthday.
Perhaps the older I get the less I want acknowledgment of my mortality and the more of my legacy. Either way, I enjoyed watching them all squirm a little as their mum made them say one nice thing about me at lunch last weekend.
The best my teen could muster was: “Well, we’ve had a tough couple of weeks and if you’d apologised quicker we could have moved on.”
It had been a tough couple of weeks mainly due to the irrational nonsense I was confronted with on a daily basis that no person, not even Chat, could have made sense of.
Luckily the rest of them had something nice to say and of our five, I still have two that actually want to be like me when they grow up.
I’m hanging on to that thought for dear life because I know it will slip through my fingers like sand.
Looking around the pub though, I was taken aback by some of the tables with young kids who had been plonked at one end with their own iPad and set of headphones.
I saw one table, thought it a bit strange, and then another with children behaving wonderfully quiet, to themselves.
They might as well have not been there.
The parents and extended family chatted politely among themselves for what appeared to be a delightfully civilised afternoon.
The children did not make a sound. They stared into their devices and at their chicken nuggets. They didn’t even interact with each other despite appearing a similar age. How vanilla.
Heaven help the fool who tells a parent what to do, but let me poke the bear.
What are parents and society so scared of with children speaking up and out, spilling drinks, crying at perceived or real sleights by their annoying peers, stepping on toes, arguing — or perhaps playing, interacting, laughing…living? Is it really such a terrible thing to have a bit of noise, a bit of chaos, a bit of life running through the middle of a family gathering?
The truth is, the spills wipe up, the tears dry, and the arguments fade.
What stays are the moments, the voices, the stories retold years later. The cheeky comment at Father’s Day lunch.
The tantrum in the middle of the café. The earnest question that made everyone pause.
It’s been a long time since I cared about a spilled glass of Coke. Nowadays I just wipe it up, buy another one and move on.
These are the things that stick — and they only happen if we give kids permission to be present, not muted. Because what’s left if children never interrupt, never test us, never say the awkward or the uncomfortable?
Silence. Polite lunches. Forgettable afternoons.
‘Honey, do you remember that Father’s Day we went to lunch with the kids and had a quiet conversation among adults?’
‘Me neither.’ Aaah, the memories.