A DAD'S LIFE:The topic of family outings raises its ugly head, writes ADAM BROPHY
‘WE DON’T do enough together,” wife says, “as a family.” The statement that strikes fear in the heart of every father. My first response is to wonder what more we could do, we live in each other’s pockets, but instead I ask what are the possibilities for furthering familial bliss?
Maybe you could come with us for more walks. C’mon, I hate walking. Unless you’re trying to get somewhere and your car is bust, what is the point? This has been a bone of contention for 20 years, my walk hatred, but she won’t let it go.
I suggest swimming but swimming is not her thing. I use this as a counterbalance for the walking issue, never expecting her to go for it (she regards chlorine as the enemy of youthful skin) but we’ve proposed and counter-proposed and got nowhere so I am now presuming the problem will go away as it usually does.
Except it doesn’t. The elder pipes up: “Yeah, dad, you do nothing with us.”
At this, I take offence. “Here, you, I work from home. I drive you everywhere. We go for coffee and hang out. I have read you a story every night of your life and you’re telling me we do nothing?”
“You’re always working. Or training. Or going somewhere.”
Cough, splutter, gasp. “Are you mental? If I have to work more than 30 hours a week I come out in hives. It’s why we’ll always be poor, why you’ll never have a pony.”
“So, if you worked more, I’d have a pony?”
Nice deflection I think, but don’t allow myself near her equine shenanigans and adopt sensitive fatherly tones instead. “No, in reality I choose to work the hours I do so I can be around as much of the time as possible for you guys.”
“If you want to work more, that’s okay – I’ll take the pony.”
Crap. Three sentences and she has me cornered. “It doesn’t work like that dearie.”
I am about to ask which she’d prefer, the horse or me, but catch myself in time, and to fill the space that my dangling open mouth requires, announce that we will go cycling instead.
Three years ago, the missus inherited a pink High Nelly bicycle from her mother. A beautiful piece of engineering, three gears, back pedal brake, a leather-sprung saddle, and pink.
I’m pretty sure it was one of those things her mother oohed and aahed at when her husband suggested it, but never thought he’d actually buy the damn thing. But home with it he came, and it sat in the garage for a good year.
Then my missus got the oohs and aahs going and convinced her old dear to part with the flamboyant machine, which she did with a great show of devastation at its loss. And so it sat in our various sheds over the past three years.
I know she doesn’t want to take to the road with us, but she’s brought up the family outings, the daughter has become involved, and both parents have shot down one option each. To do so again would put her in negative equity on her own proposal. I’d never have to walk again and she knows it. A lifetime of Sunday afternoons in front of the TV beckons, off-duty and unhassled, until she says: “All right. Let’s do it.”
The kids have a circuit around the house which they race non-stop. The missus has me pump her tyres and check her brakes before wobbling off with the nippers round a couple of practise laps. The kids are like, well, kids on bikes, skidding and flying. The missus cycles like a baby foal, all cute and wobbly, enjoying her long-postponed maiden voyage.
It’s a Sunday, so there’ll be no traffic. We head into town, a pink peloton, for an early dinner. Except it’s the Sunday of the West Cork Rally, the busiest day of the year for motors in Clonakilty.
Soon we are surrounded by 1970s Escorts, 1990s Imprezas and a variety of Minis. Engines scream and exhausts grunt in indignation as we pick our way through race traffic. The kids have no fear and beetle along as if they belong there. The missus, only focused on keeping upright, refuses to be self-conscious about the colour of her jalopy and seems the ultimate antithesis to fumes and testosterone among the motoring throng. We park, grab some pub grub, and rejoin the petrol parade on the way home.
This I could happily do as a family every weekend.