When you first have babies, there are many things you hope you might become: a nurturing force for good; a protector; a source of unconditional love; a confidante; a supporter. But a ferry?
As a parent of very small children, when the kids dominate your days because your life is their life and their life is yours, you sometimes think about how it will be when they are no longer so utterly dependent on you.
You wonder what the future will be like when they have their own mates, their own interests, their own opinions. It can be unnerving. But at least, you think, you’ll start to get your own life back. Wrong!
Last weekend was a fairly typical one in our house. On Saturday morning, my teenage daughter had to be taken to a play rehearsal at a theatre some 15 minutes away. In fact, because she got the time wrong, she had to be taken, brought home, then taken again an hour later. Meanwhile, my nine-year-old son had football training – fortunately within walking distance, but he needed to be accompanied in both directions nonetheless.
In the evening, we drove to the theatre yet again to watch our daughter’s show (Beauty and the Beast, five stars), bringing her back afterwards. Ferrying the kids hither and thither is practically a full-time job.
On Sunday, it was a similar pattern. Drama rehearsals all day in the neighbouring town for the teenager (Matilda, showing this week), and a football match in another town for our son (a 5-1 defeat, for which no blame can be attached to my refereeing this time). My wife bore the brunt in the morning. In the afternoon, I took my turn, taking my son to and from cricket training, before collecting his sister from her wretched theatricals.
It is, in short, exhausting. By encouraging our children to take up extra-curricular activities, we have become slaves to their participation in varied sporting and performing endeavours. Logistics have to be carefully managed; at busy times, notes litter the fridge and WhatsApp groups ping into action like machine guns. My wife often ends up doing more than her fair share of the organising. I have an irritating tendency to assume it will all be all right on the night.
Sometimes, it can feel as if we spend more time traipsing after the kids these days than when we had to spend half our lives at the park or at soft play. I realise now why my parents put me off playing football as a child. As it was, I sometimes played up to four cricket matches a week in the summer months, each necessitating at least a 30-minute lift to and from. I didn’t much appreciate it then, but thanks mum and dad.
And in the end, of course, despite the occasional pang of resentment, we’d have it no other way for our kids. I would rather my son is scoring real goals on the pitch than pixel-based ones on his Xbox. And I’d much rather he was facing the danger of a hard ball in the cricket nets than whatever dangers lie in wait on the internet.
Meanwhile, my daughter has benefitted enormously from performing in musicals, from volunteering at a nearby stables and from the connections that the world beyond home and school can bring.
Sure enough, in addition to the simple fun of playing sport or singing in a choir, it is often such extracurricular pursuits that help our wider social development. I have no doubt that endless cricket with kids from schools I didn’t attend helped me to understand a wider range of perspectives – irrespective of whether I understood the impact it had on my parents’ life.
So we mustn’t mind too much this ferrying stage. Even if it does mean that my wife and I are mostly ships that pass in the night.
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