Lots of parents say they’d do anything for their kids, but would they? Would they really? If push absolutely came to shove, would they make the greatest sacrifice imaginable to give their child a better shot at life? Would they really be that selfless? I doubt it.
I am better than these people. For I have already stared down the edge of the precipice. And, even though what I saw chilled me to the core, I still took the plunge. When people hear about the sacrifice I’ve made in the name of parenthood, they’ll erect statues in my honour. What I’ve done to make my son happy is completely unprecedented. It’s unmatched in human history. That’s right, I’ve grown a beard.
Now, bear with me. I realise that growing a beard doesn’t seem like that much of a sacrifice, but it is. Other people, when they grow a beard, look as if they’ve actually grown a beard. Not me, though. My beard is the exact same colour as my face. I look like I’ve put on a bunch of weight and then contracted necrotising fasciitis. It’s barely even a beard. It’s ugly and it itches and I hate it, but I did it for my son. All Dad of the Year awards should be sent to the usual address, please.
I’ve grown the beard because my son has discovered textures. Something clicked in his brain and now he absolutely has to touch every single thing he sees. Until fairly recently this instinct was limited to toys, but the other day I saw him staring at our living room wall in much the same way that cartoon wolves stare at uncooked steaks, so all bets are off.
The beard is partly an attempt to satiate his hunger for new textures, and partly an attempt to stop him from using my wife’s hair as a climbing frame. Happily, it seems to be working. He lunges at the beard whenever he sees it, slapping it and grabbing it and running his fingers through it with an abnormal level of glee. True, this means that my face is constantly slathered with baby saliva, but that doesn’t matter.
At least I’ll be able to shave it off soon enough. Because, thanks to a nudge from our health visitor, his texture fascination is gradually starting to turn towards food. We’re giving baby-led weaning a go, which means cutting up pieces of soft food and leaving them on a tray for him to play around with. In theory, this will teach him not to be a fussy eater as an adult. In his grandmother’s mind, it’s such an unstoppably dangerous practice that we may as well just deliberately choke him on bits of Lego now and cut out the middle man. In reality, though, it’s just an excuse for him to jackhammer a slice of banana with his fists until nothing is left but dust and blood.
Because food isn’t food to him yet. It’s an enemy. It’s competition. It’s a thing to be destroyed as extravagantly as possible. Give him a slice of cucumber and he’ll sweep it from view in one movement, like a furious executive in a bad film. Then he’ll do it again. And again. Then, if we’re lucky, he’ll grab it, hold it up in front of us and carefully but firmly squeeze the life out of it, before discarding it for good.
This is what mealtimes have become in our house. He might not be eating much, but at least he’s learning the joy of mindless destruction. Perhaps this is his way of telling me that my beard looks awful. Message received, son. Message received.
