I used to want to stop Charlie growing up. I sought to hold on to the girl who watched Lord of the Rings with me and liked her pizza with extra pepperoni and made fun of the fact that Julianne couldn’t catch a ball. Now I have a more realistic vision of the future, one that isn’t based on a pathological desire to protect my children from people like Gideon Tyler and Gordon Ellis and Liam Baker; as well as bad boyfriends, ignorant bosses, cruel comments, drunk maniacs and intolerant bigots.
Parenthood is a lot like being a trapeze artist, knowing when to let go and watch your child tumble away in mid-air, reaching out for the next rung, testing herself. My job is to be here when she swings back, ready to catch her and to launch her into the world again.
Lately, I’ve become more optimistic that Charlie will be OK. She’ll weather adolescence and a divorce (if it comes to that), and I’ll be around to see her graduate from university, collect the Nobel Prize, fall in love, marry and be blissfully happy.
When I lie awake in the morning, inventorying my tics and twitches, waiting for my medication to click in, I sometimes think of all the things I haven’t done yet. I haven’t slept with a movie star or climbed Kilimanjaro or learned a language other than schoolboy French. I haven’t written a book or run a marathon or swum with dolphins.
Mr Parkinson will not kill me, but I will die with him unless the race for a cure beats his unrelenting progress. Some people think news like this would change their attitude towards life. They have fantasies of self-transformation, of climbing mountains or jumping out of planes.
Not me. You won’t catch me running with the bulls in Pamplona or searching for the source of the Amazon. I’d rather a mundane end than a gloriously brave or stupid one.
In the meantime, I am going to tremble and twitch and spasm into middle age. It’s not that I don’t feel the aching pain of loss. When I see footage of myself from six years ago, standing tall, fighting fit - images of a younger, healthier me - I do feel angry. My strength, balance and dexterity have been compromised. I am half the man I was, searching for the rest.
Maybe I’ll move back to London. Maybe I’ll learn to dance. Maybe I’ll be the guy I dream of being, holding the line on the life that I promised myself.
Some nights I still sit outside the cottage, watching over my family, seeing their shadows behind the curtains - it’s the best show in town and I still have a pretty good seat.
Raising children, I’ve decided, is a lot sadder than I expected. Seeing them grow up brightly and vividly is tempered by the knowledge that each year brings another share of lasts. The last time I push my daughter on a swing. The last time I play the Tooth Fairy or Santa Claus. The last time I read a bedtime story.
If I could give my daughters one piece of advice I would tell them to make the most of the first times - their first kiss, their first date, their first love, the first smile of their first child . . .
There can be only one.
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