A flurry of birthday parties these weeks as the bumps of the antenatal class reach the grand old age of One. The mums have seen each other a great deal in the last year and a bit; for the Birthing Partners this is a reunion of changed, chastened men. The beards, interestingly, are mostly gone. The consensus amongst us is that the ‘classes’ might just as well have been coffee mornings for pregnant women, since the sole but very worthwhile thing to come out of them is the mum’s network.
On Saturday we were in the garden of the cheeky church loudmouth for Evie’s birthday. There are a lot of Evies about, it was the hot name of 2009. The babies scramble on the lawn for our inspection. Lee and I feel a natural affinity as his Ben and my Brit Jnr (the two youngest, funnily enough) are the only tots to have worked out how to walk. The rest of these Dads don’t know what’s about to hit them. We talk about destruction and sleep and vuvuzelas.
Lee’s wife trundles over. We blench. Somebody says “Oh, wow.” She is enormous. “Yes,” says Lee. “We’ve got another one coming. Already. Due in October. ”
“October?” says the church loudmouth. “Wow….”
“Gosh,” I say.
“It was a bit of a surprise,” says Lee.
“Wow,” says somebody, again.
“Yes,” says Lee.
My sister and I were both born in the same year. My father is very proud of this.
ReplyDeleteApparently it's referred to as being 'irish twins'.
As you and the other fathers are still at least a couple of years away from having any discenible use other than as sources of ceaseless praise and grunt labour, a judicious stream of "Wow!"s is the safest bet. It's the new father's equivalent of the servant's "Very good, Sir". If bored beyond tears, try to remember that England lost, poetry is all rubbish and at least you don't have make those obligatory speeches anymore about how the pre-natal classes were enthralling and the co-birthing experience was life-changing.
ReplyDeleteWarning: In these years, do not under any cirumstances assume a mother you haven't seen for a while is or is not pregnant.
So then, the pudding club as social networking, common purpose, similar aims, procreation as message stick, begetting creates mates.
ReplyDeleteYet they a beauteous offspring shall beget. --Milton.
Berle, that is.
Am I glad I'm out of it, wimmen's work, so that's why you're hanging around the pool hall Brit and incidentally, the last paragraph, you are becoming slightly, Alan Bennettish, any chance of a monologue.
I have an Edie, short for Edith.
ReplyDeleteNamed after the Cults, Edie (Ciao Baby) in my case, or after Saint Edith of Wilton in my wifes case.
It all works in the end.
I wonder if these names (Evie, Grace, Ruby etc) all come round in fashion cycles partly because people name their daughters after their grandmothers?
ReplyDeleteI imagine that was the way it worked before daytime TV.
ReplyDeleteGood use of the word "blench".
ReplyDeleteThanks.
ReplyDelete