How far back can you remember?

One of my earliest memories is of a seven-year old version of me, standing on the toilet seat next to my father.  We were both busy shaving, only my razor was made of Lego.

This was serious play.

Nearly thirty-three years later, I find myself looking into the bathroom mirror and seeing the reflection my 14-year old son standing next to me.  He is taking his first shave. 

It reminds me of the Lego-brick shaving episode and I momentarily wonder where the time has gone.

Thinking about it, though, I am not sure whether I really helped him that much or taught him anything new.  Shaving, after all, is not exactly a fine art; and, these days, razors are such that you really have to work quite hard to do any lasting damage.  That said, I wanted to mark the occasion, acknowledge the moment, and show a degree of fatherly support.

So I stood there.  Watching.  Feeling slightly awkward.  Not quite sure what to say.

Now there are plenty of Dads out there writing about this ‘father-son’ moment, the significance of shaving as a rite of passage, as well as top tips for helping boys survive the perilous journey towards manhood.

Courtesy of YouTube, there’s even a step-by-step guide to first-time shaving that, if I had known, would have meant we could both have avoided those few awkward moments. 

I guess that some dad, somewhere, figured that it would be easier simply to send his son a hyperlink.  And he was probably right.

Or was he?

The thing is, the more I think about it, the more I realize that the important, significant moments in our life – those fragments that somehow take on universal, determinative significance for us – are almost always rather mundane, even slightly awkward, at the time.  Whether it is a first shave, a first kiss, or even the birth of our children – it is often only after the fact that we fill them with infinite meaning and significance. 

In other words, it is not the moment that is meaningful – but the story this moment subsequently allows us to tell.

I think both my son and I would acknowledge that our ‘moment’ was somewhat uncomfortable and that I shouldn’t make a habit, in the future, of watching him shave.

At the same time, I wouldn’t have missed it for the world.  For my story, I needed to be able to say I was there.  For his story, he needed to have this memory of me to pass on to his own son one day.

This story is last part of a trilogy about school refusal.

And this is all about bringing closure to a year-long emotional journey for both father and son.

The silence was killing me, even as a new school year began and things seemed to have returned to ‘normal’. 

It was not the terrifying, stone wall of silence between me and my son of a year ago, when things seemed so dark and hopeless.  But, still, I was very much aware that we had never had that conversation.  He had never shared with me his side of the story – his tale of what it was like to be a teenager trapped in this fortress of anxiety.

Sitting on the Eurostar, travelling alone, another email arrived in my inbox.  It was exactly what I had been waiting for.  His story, finally breaking the silence between us. 

It speaks for itself.

Anyone who saw me now would believe I was just a normal kid.  A kid who has a family, has friends and goes to school.

But I used to sit in school, excluded from the crowd – alone, afraid and wondering to myself, How long until the end of the day?  Finally, the bell would ring and with it came a feeling of utter joy, happiness and relief.  I would push open the door and run, like an animal released into the wild after a period of captivity.  I would run home, open the front door, go upstairs, slam my bedroom door and cried.

I could tell people were mad at me. I could tell people wanted me back at school… and now!  But it wasn’t going to happen.  Not just like that.  I could see it in their faces.  Every time I went out of the house, I had to avoid certain places, avoiding people, because I was scared of what they might say.  In fact, I was scared of everything.

One day off school turned into two.  Two turned into a week.  Suddenly, before I knew it, it was a whole school term.  The longer I stayed at home, the harder I felt it would be to ever go back.  I could feel it inside, it was getting worse.  I was becoming more frustrated, more alone.

I felt like I would never go back to school.  Ever.

During this time, I admit my relationship with my dad was not quite as strong as it had been before.  I could sense in him that he couldn’t understand why I wouldn’t go to school.  There was a period where I even dreaded the thought of him coming to visit for the weekend.   I was too ashamed, embarrassed and scared.  I was scared of what he might ask, what he might say, what he might do.  I had no hope, and my confidence was at an all time low. 

I had no trust in anyone:  my parents, my friends, my therapist, and even myself.  I had no trust that it was going to be alright. I thought I had gone into a dark cave and that I was never going to come out!  

Then, after having probably the worst week of my life, I decided I can’t live on like this.  I realized that I was going to end up killing myself.

So I went and got the computer, sat down, and emailed my dad.  It was time to return to school.

To cut a long story short, I did get back into school.  I moved to Brussels and now I’m enjoying school more than ever!  And if I have learned one thing, it would be this: You cannot live life without belief - belief in others, belief in life and most important of all belief in yourself.

If I look back on the past eighteen months, it is clear how far we have come – as individuals and as a family.  Things have changed, that’s for sure.  We have all had to make adjustments and accept the new routines.  But if I could judge the quality of my son's life by the number of school friends he has on Facebook, his academic grades, his involvement in the school football team or simply the smile on his face when he arrives at school each day, I would dare to say he might just about be the happiest boy I know. 

And what more could a father want than that?

Missed Part One and Part Two of this trilogy?  Click the links to catch up.

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.