When is a dad not a dad? 

This question has bugged me for years now, but I guess that perhaps that’s normal – particularly as someone who lives in the shadow of divorce and the endless ritual of weekend ‘appointments’ with my children. 

Once upon a time, I never would have given it a second thought.  I had always ‘been there’ and simply assumed that I would always be captain of the ship that steered these young lives towards adulthood.

I never once thought, back in the day, that we would end up shipwrecked.  I never imagined, washed up on the shores of a strange land, how everything I had taken for granted would be challenged.

So what makes a dad?

Do we lay claim to this honorable role by virtue of our biological connection to these young lives?  Do we command their love as a by-product of what we do – day after day, year after year?  Are we, in other words, as uniquely important to our children as we like to imagine?  Or can anyone with the right level of commitment and dedication lay claim to the paternal wheel?

Philosophers have argued this point – albeit at a higher level – for centuries.  It’s called the old doing versus being chestnut.

In 1995, a better man than me, Jean-Dominique Bauby, editor-in-chief of French Elle and the father of two young children, found himself completely paralysed, speechless and only able to move one eyelid.  With his eyelid he ‘dictated’ a remarkable book that reflects deeply on the question on what it means to be human – and what it means to be a dad.

Describing himself as ‘something of a zombie father’, Bauby gives us a deeply moving account of his Father’s Day meeting with his children, Théophile and Céleste.

“As he walks, Théophile dabs a Kleenex at the thread of saliva escaping my closed lips.  His movements are tentative, at once tender and fearful, as if he were dealing with an unpredictable animal.  As soon as we slow down, Céleste cradles my head in her bare arms, covers my forehead with noisy kisses and says over and over, ‘You’re my dad, you’re my dad,’ as if in incantation.

… Until my stroke we had felt no need to fit this made-up holiday into our emotional calendar.  But this time we spend the whole of our symbolic day together, affirming that even a rough sketch, a shadow, a tiny fragment of a dad is still a dad.” (The Diving-Bell and the Butterfly, 1997)

It is hard to imagine the depth of feeling and haunting sense of loss that lies between the lines.  And tragically, there were no more Father’s Days for this family to celebrate as, two days after the publication of his memoir, Bauby passed away.

So what does make a dad?

The more I think about it, the more I realize that there are no easy answers – no one-fits-all recipe for this ‘parenting game’.  But one thing I can say for sure is that Bauby got it right - a tiny fragment of a dad is still a dad.

Even if all we can do is tell our children how much we love them with the blink of one eye.