My Life's Work

Dear Úna,

I’ve thought long and hard about what these letters to you might be, how they might be arranged, what topics I might cover, or what pearls of wisdom might be hidden within. But as your arrival became imminent, I had a realisation: to assume that you will be reading these one day was my first mistake as a new Dad. To presume that you would read these letters before I had given you a lifetime of love and care was pure ego, never mind the idea that I have any pearls of wisdom worth passing on.

I can only hope that, in time, you’ll be curious to read what I have to say about the world, about you and me and your Mom, but I will not expect it. My promise to you is that I will be there for you and love you, so that one day these words might matter to you, but that is my life’s work to get us there

You’re 5 weeks old and lying beside me on the couch while your Mom catches up on some well deserved rest. I have a YouTube video playing in the background of a woman shooshing. It turns out I can’t shoosh and type at the same time. It’s not that I don’t want to shoosh, it’s just that I can only shoosh for so long and you deserve as much shooshing as you want. It’s funny how quickly a routine has appeared, little rituals that your Mom and I have taken to. I hold you this way and she holds you that way, we’ve found out what works to get you to sleep and how to keep you awake. We’ve lost count of how many nappies we’ve changed. No one tells you just how many nappies you go through. I would’ve had the cupboards stocked to the gills had I known. We had bags and bags of clothes that people bought us and gave us second hand. When we moved into our third trimester I had a freak out when I was folding all of these clothes on our bed, picturing the rest of my life under a mountain of identical tiny T-Shirts. It turns out that you’ve been wearing a rotation of 5 vests, two sleep suits and the odd full outfit. Much easier to deal with.

I’ve been working lots. I took on an extra job at a bakery a few months before Christmas to make some extra money but it means that I haven’t been around as much and that’s been hard. It’s connected me with the collective Dad, the one that goes off to work when he’d rather be at home with his baby, it’s connected me with my own Dad and the larger sense of duty. I’ve been wondering how deep the collective Dad’s desire to protect goes, is it simply cultural or is it built into our DNA. What is the difference between that desire within Moms and Dads? I’m not sure but I know that it’s made going to work a little easier.

With this lack of time I haven’t been writing as much as I would like. I wrote consistently for around 3 years and it became my safe space. I realised that if I could write I could get my head straight. I could clear the fog and get to the matter of things within my own mind. But as the world became darker, so my writing became less hopeful. I got stuck in a revolving diatribe against this war and that power and that was never my intention. I wanted to peel back the layers of the world and find some truth but the more atrocities I witnessed the harder it became to write about anything else. Deciding to stop writing all together came with it it’s own feelings of guilt but that’s what I did. Without writing I’ve felt as though something is missing. My mind feels heavier, or just more full. Before you were born I was talking to a friend and explained to them that I had lost hope in the world, that I believed that good rarely conquers bad, and that is precisely what makes goodness so important, because there is so little of it. I told him that you, my unborn child, were my hope. Not in the sense that I would put my hopelessness on you so that you would bring me hope, but rather that my hope would be in you. That I would find hope in providing you with a fulfilling life for as long as you might let me. The decision to change the form of my writing came with the feeling that I was quitting, that I, yet again, wasn’t sticking with one thing. But with you came a sense of freedom. Let people think what they want about me, let them think I’m a quitter or a scatter brain, because I want you to know that life is about change, that you should not settle or be afraid to about turn just because of what people might think. Do it all, my dear. Have as many jobs as you want, play all the instruments, have 10 hobbies, read and write and fight for what you believe in. I’ll be there for all of them.

You’re stirring but I’m glad I’m writing. Thank you for giving that to me again.

Dad x