Few people expect things to stay the same when they have a child and a lot of the changes I expected came and went precisely as billed. Yet my body and mind have gradually adjusted to the errant whims of this unreasonable little man who shares my home in some less expected ways, too.
Lifting that amiable bag of spuds has actually become easier the heavier he’s become, meaning – and I can barely believe this - I’ve accidentally strengthened my arms despite a lifetime avoiding upper-body exercise the way most people avoid eating glass.
My senses are heightened. I can identify repulsive smells from eight paces, all the better to retreat in the hopes my wife will deal with them first. Even six blinks from sleep, I can hear his cough across two postcodes. Like Jason Bourne I can, without looking, intuit the location of the nearest bathroom in any public place. Admittedly Matt Damon does this so he can deposit a hitman he’s just killed with a biro, whereas I’ll be dealing with whichever of my son’s toxic arse explosions I can’t unload on my wife.
Strangest of all is a sentimental tendency that wasn’t there before. What’s odd is I always thought I was plenty emotional. My dad, despite being a quiet, stoical sort by nature, is more open about his feelings than any man his age I’ve ever met, even if those feelings are often annoyance at his dog, or a heartfelt desire for a sausage sandwich.
Growing up in Northern Ireland, I often heard people say, ‘There’s no use crying about it’, whether barked in frustration towards another or, more often, directed inward, with quiet resignation, to themselves. This wasn’t our way. Crying was never considered shameful or unmanly – I just never got around to it.
Nowadays, however, my eye has gone quite near my bladder and I suddenly find myself crying a fair bit. Not necessarily at my son, but at films, books, ads and, in one moment of lip-wobbling melancholy last November, the Wikipedia page for Death is Nothing At All by Henry Scott Holland. I mean, for crying out loud, I just looked that poem up for this article and started, well, crying out loud.
The effect is alarming, not least for my wife, who’s now likely to see my damp, bloodshot face burbling along to Coco, The Muppet Christmas Carol or a particularly stirring ad for a donkey sanctuary.
I find myself seeking out things that provoke my newfound capacity for emotional catharsis. ‘Oh,’ I might say to myself, idly scrolling down my phone in a local café, ‘I bet this video of a deaf baby hearing its mother for the first time will cut me clean in two.’
I’m making up for lost time, and if I do start sobbing, I can always pop to the nearest lav and clean myself up. Good thing I know where they all are.
Follow Séamas on Twitter @shockproofbeats
