I cut my son’s fingernails last week. You wouldn’t believe what a beautiful job I did on them. With an audacity that bordered on outright arrogance, I ditched the stubby little baby scissors I’d previously been using, in favour of actual adult, metal, razor-sharp, dangerous monstrosities that looked exactly like they had been designed to take someone’s eye out. And, despite him thrashing around like a sack of eels, I still managed to give him the most perfect manicure imaginable. Future historians will look back and see it as the definitive manicure of our times.
Three days later, the nails grew out and I had to cut them all over again. My masterpiece, ruined.
This lack of permanence is really starting to get to me. It has always been like this. The first time I changed his nappy, overseen by a temperamental midwife in a boiling, windowless maternity unit while my wife lapsed in and out of an exhausted drug haze, I did a similarly brilliant job. Everything was tucked in and symmetrical, and wiped so fastidiously that you could have eaten your breakfast off it.
The pride I felt at doing something so well was astonishing. And then, almost immediately, he crapped himself. Another masterpiece. Another pile of dust.
Now, obviously, I’ve realised that a bit of sloppiness is OK sometimes. I halfheartedly dab his bum with a dried-out wetwipe, blob on some Sudocrem if I remember, then throw the new nappy on back to front, or skewed, or with both legs sticking through one hole, or stapled together, or whatever. It doesn’t matter. He’s only going to poo in it, after all.
Everything is in flux, all the time. Early on, I could get him to sleep by hooking my hands under his armpits, resting his cheeks on my thumbs and gently bouncing him up and down on my lap. Then he got too big for that, so I took to rocking him in my arms. Now that’s stopped working as well, so my current method mainly involves walking around with him for an hour while I swear under my breath.
The unofficial motto of my life has always been Learn the Ropes Quickly and Then Coast. That’s what it was like at school, and university, and every job and relationship I’ve ever had. Get in, figure out the rules and then slack off.
But a baby won’t let you do that. With a baby, everything is new all the time. You learn things – how to hold them, how to dress them, how to make them sleep – and then, just when you’ve got them down, they grow up a little bit and you’re back at square one. Right now, for example, my son has just become alarmingly proficient at grabbing, so today’s lesson has involved learning how to drink a cup of tea at arm’s length from my own mouth. I’ve never had to do that before.
And we’re still right at the very beginning of this journey. We’re still at the part where we’re figuring out the best way to clean a child’s bottom. We haven’t had to recalibrate and learn how do deal with a kid who moves around, or talks back, or needs homework help, or wants to stay out all night, or borrow a car, or has to move back in because, by that point, a deposit for a flat will cost several times more than anyone could possibly earn during the entire course of their lives.
This is all yet to come. The rest of my life is a going to be a giant learning curve. So much for coasting.
