Martin Bridgeman

We come in all sizes and shapes, creeds, colours, sexualities, social settings, marital or other arrangements and countries but I like to think we Dads/Das/Fathers/Pops/Das/Old Fellas/Auld Fellas/Old Lads/Auld Lads/Quare Fellas have some things in common I think: we all want our kids to work out, to do well, to make their way in the world, do it for themselves and try to do it without being knobs basically. I’m paraphrasing. Last time I checked I didn’t have all the answers either…

I had a short time to share my own father with the world. I can truly say I adored him because I was still really a child when he passed away and hadn’t negotiated the tricky in-between phase of child and adult. I still wonder how we would have gotten on as grown ups, or how I would have anyway. I didn’t process his passing very well at the time and probably still haven’t but I do like to think I’ve tried at least to be the sort of man he would have been happy to call his own. Even that, in my case, is complicated by adoption. There was no blood between but there was deep love and a willingness to do all he could in his power to raise me ‘right’. I have one small regret. We never got to have a pint together. Its not a big or important thing really but it would have been nice to mark my passing to adulthood. I moved on, though, full in the knowledge that I was loved and wanted and wished for. It helped. I had a pint with my son and it was a nice moment, just him and me, a little echo. My daughter and I have shared several too.

He taught me a lot, some of it learned through stories about his kindness and wisdom after he passed when I was capable of learning something, some only learned last year about his quiet way about things. He and my mother made quite the couple. I was lucky in that way. He was a wood turner, so he learned the wisdom of thought before action, measuring, imagining and then acting, of seeing things from other angles. I hope I remember this and try to act accordingly. He listened too, properly and never judged. It was his way.

He played music and loved to play for people, to make them sing and enjoy the deep gift it is. He sang beautifully with his family and they made some amazing harmonies when they did. Listening…see? He loved the Beatles so there’s that too…

Then life happens for you when you’re busy making plans and then you fall in love and the time for big decisions comes and you know deep down that it will be alright, despite the worries that all fathers feel. I have yet to meet one who didn’t fret and obsess while the mother of your children got on with it and then the moment when you hold your children in the crook of your arm comes and it washes all your fears away, mostly anyway. Not everybody has been that lucky and as I say, we come in all shapes and sizes and circumstances and all I can speak about is my own. Being a father has been the greatest thing I have ever done as a person and I know it’s still a work in progress.

Its a running gag in our house about what to get me for this day. Books and CDs? Really? I don’t do fuss but they manage to make me smile and mark the day and that works for me because it comes from the heart and that’s what’s important. As much as I’ve tried to be there for our two, they’ve been there for me, making sense of being human when my moods and mental health issues have clouded our lives. They are ‘there’ in that awfully clichéd way but it counts and it works in ways they may never know. They were sometimes the very thing that made me think, get my act together and seek help and it still gives me strength.

The things I want every year is that our kids will grow and prosper. Once you get over the moment of infatuation with their little fingers and toes you smile, you swallow and say right, lets get on with this. These little creatures will burrow deep in to your soul and stay there, impervious to anything life throws at you because that sort of love, fear, anxiety and hope is for real and bullet proof humanity. You do it because it’s what you deeply want to do, it makes sense and you make the effort to follow through as best as you can.

My two have good hearts, strong cores and a sense of who they are and have worked really hard to achieve what they have and continue to do so. That work ethic, head down, follow the dream, make it work mentality comes through me from their grandfather (Mick) and and grandmother (Maisie) I think and it makes me smile when they move to another stage, another tribute to hard work and love and guided passion. If I’ve had anything to do with that at all, well that’s me happy.

I love them deeply…even when they still think it’s smart if they draw a willy on your card.