Nothing to be ashamed of
As a writer, I spend all day at home and pretend I'm working. Sometimes I wonder how exciting our son thinks my life is. Then I wish I was an action dad who sets off on a mysterious mission early in the morning and returns home in the evening, exhausted but happy. I think of my dad and the sound of his voice when he would come in the door and shout «I'm home». Not particularly surprising news, but we took it as if he had come straight home from the moon.
In nostalgic moments, I leave the house and wander around the city for hours, checking at Orell Füssli to make sure they haven't discarded my books yet and looking at the persimmons in the Delicatessa at Globus. But when I get home, my «I'm home» sounds wrong somehow. It sounds like a persimmon, not like happiness.
Can you pull yourself together for 18 years without tearing yourself apart in the process?
«How do I want the child to remember me?» is the somewhat sentimental question that I ask myself more and more often as I get older: as the eccentric creative mind who created works that comforted the child after his death because he never had time to bring him up? As a mate who was always up for a match? As the eternally young at heart? Or prematurely old? And do I even have a choice?
Fears and complexes as a father
However, these are only superficialities that distract from something that is not so easy to conceal: your own fears and complexes. All those situations in which you feel weak and discouraged. You may be able to hide such negative feelings from yourself, but not from a bright child, especially not if you are at home all the time as a father.
I never saw my father cry. The only time he was close to tears was when he told me that my mum had cancer, and that was on the phone, so I'm not entirely sure. He was also never sick or lying on the sofa moaning «I hate the world, but I hate myself even more». All things I do on a single rainy Sunday morning.
Where is the line between mistakes and failure?
They say you have to pull yourself together. But it takes a while until the child is out of the house. Can you pull yourself together for 18 years without tearing yourself apart in the process? I keep hearing the advice that you should own up to your mistakes, because that way your child will learn that they are nothing to be ashamed of. So the father as a role model of how not to do it? After this type, nothing can embarrass the child. But where is the line between mistakes and failure?
I cut open the persimmon, which I bought after all, and put it on a plate for my son and me. I watch him devoutly spoon up the orange-coloured fruit. And, as always, watching my son eat calms my heart. We fathers don't have to be gods. Perhaps it is enough for us to slice up a fruit of the gods for our children every now and then.
