A few years ago I became well acquainted with the concept of powerlessness. I’m fully aware and have come to terms with the fact that I have no control over other people, places or things. It’s liberating in some ways, I’m responsible for my own behavior and that’s about it. As long as I don’t behave dickishly, how you behave is no concern of mine. I became fairly content in this world view and – abdicated of the responsibility of managing everyone else’s business – happy.

Then I fathered a child.

And with his arrival, my simple life philosophy became slightly less tenable. Because no matter how you slice it, I’ve got some responsibility for my boy and I have some power over him. I guess it is a balancing act between keeping the boy alive and driving myself insane trying to control every single moment of his young life. I’ve never been very good at balance.

My short adventure in solo parenting was a challenge, particularly with a joint father-son summer cold thrown into the mix. I’m used to Boy Z ignoring requests – “Stop climbing on the dog, Boy Z!”, “Do NOT put the phone in the dish tank, Boy Z!”, “For god’s sake, go to sleep child!” – I’m used to him doing whatever he wants. That’s part of toddlerhood and while frustrating is mostly manageable. But it can all build up and it can reach a point where it becomes viscerally unmanageable.

Ironically, I made it through ten days of solo parenting but it got to that unmanageable point the day after Dr. O’C’s return. Yesterday I hit a wall. It was just one of those days. A day on which Boy Z would do nothing according to my plan. A day full of whinging and crying and destruction.  It climaxed with the Boy’s weekly swimming lesson. Through some unknown neural twitch in his toddler brain, he decided he just wasn’t going to do swimming yesterday. He wasn’t going to relinquish his dummy, wasn’t going to finish or give up his half-drunk bottle, was going to scream when I attempted to take either out of his clenched little fists.

And I nearly lost it. And I wanted to throttle him. And I just wanted to scream:

Why won’t you do what I want!?! Why won’t you listen to me?!? Damn it!!!

But I didn’t. Largely because there were a lot of people around the pool deck and there is nothing I like less than making a spectacle of myself. Instead I shoved him to his mother and went to take a shower and we went home.

It’s not the first time I lost my temper with him. Nor was it that big a deal in the grand scheme of things. It was just a damn swim class – $13 and a half an hour wasted. But I came home completely deflated.

My standard formula for writing blog posts is to wrap it all up with a pithy lesson learned. But I don’t have one for today. Days like yesterday make me question whether or not I’m qualified to do this – whether or not I have the tools for this job. I’m not a particularly patient person (but I do love me some alliteration). I spend about 84% of the time with my head squarely up my own ass. My ideal Sunday afternoon would be spent curled up in a comfy chair in a balmy summer breeze with a good novel. This fatherhood gig… I don’t know. From the day I found out Dr. O’C was pregnant I made a resolution that I was going to be a great Dad, maybe the best Dad ever. A Dad that they would write books about. Today, I’m wondering if I’m in way over my head.

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The Kinks’ “Lola versus Powerman and the Moneygoround” is available from Amazon.

Speaking of buying music, some of you have been buying music on iTunes via links on this site. Since I get a small cut on sales, I think it only fair that I give you something in return. So, if you’ve bought something through this site recently send me an e-mail (chris at afreeman dot org) and I’ll see if I can’t find a little thank you gift to send you.

 
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