From little things...

Life is full of small moments that make you stop and reassess your way of thinking about life and things or even how you see others. Then you have the monumental moments that knock you to the floor and take the air from your lungs, sometimes they are so bad, you think that there is no way forward.

When I look back over my life and reflect on the people I have lost, losing my parents when I was quite young, much-loved sisters and brothers, friends. The devastation that cancer brings, not only to the sufferer, but anyone who knows them. To watch someone, who was vibrant and funny and full of the vitality of life, wither to a skeleton, is heart breaking, soul destroying, faith rattling.

I know I am not the only one who has been affected by this and all the many afflictions that try to drag us mortals, kicking and screaming to their grave; it’s just, my age means that I have witnessed a lot. What is my takeaway from all this impermanence, and it took me a long time to get there, I appreciate the time I have and the few people I share my time with.

But, that’s not why we are here. We’re here to talk about small things that make a big difference in the forming of our life. I struggled with this, firstly because my 60-year-old hard drive is full and I’m having trouble accessing my memory, secondly, the big things seem to block out the important little things. Then it occurred to me, I have four little things that absolutely changed my life; for the better.

As you’ve probably guessed, I have four children and none of them are small anymore. I will occasionally call ‘I’, ‘we’ now because I didn’t do this on my own. We created the perfect symmetrical family, two girls and two boys in that order. Forced gender allocation aside, they haven’t told us otherwise.

I will admit now that I don’t always understand my boys, sometimes it’s like I forgot what it was like to be a boy, and it’s not like I haven’t spent enough time with them, I was a stay-at-home dad for eight or so years, then I got work at their school. Maybe we spent too much time together. Oh well, they can take that up with a therapist if they feel the need. My girls on the other hand were a different story, we have, I think a very great relationship, which began as a cute daddy / daughters thing, ridiculously incoherent conversations and generally being comfortable to act silly with each other, but that turned into so much more.

This is where the ‘small things’, comes in. As they became real people, who could not only think for themselves and have opinions about things other than Spice Girls or Back Street Boys, I was made to look at the type of man I was and if I was a good model of a man for my girls and, women in general.

I would like to take this moment to acknowledge my beautiful, intelligent wife who somehow saw the man I am now, in the scared, confused young man she first met.

It took some time, and some disturbed questioning looks from my second daughter and disgusted outrage from my first born, to make me question, me. I should explain, I am not a particularly manly man. I don’t drink much, don’t smoke, abhor drugs, my wife makes me watch sport (rugby and football, real football, go Chelsea Women), and I don’t have friends outside work, so no friends. What I had to question was what I saw as appropriate male behaviour, behaviour I never questioned before.

I worked in a workshop environment for fifteen years before we had children, and it was very male heavy, with porn magazines readily available, swearing and wildly inappropriate talk about women. Most of these men were married. Not everyone joined in the stupidity, but no one questioned it. It was seen as harmless fun, I wonder if the women we used to ogle as we peered out the window on our breaks, thought it harmless. I could have become a real arsehole.

It amazes me how different two people can be. Two people who have been brought up together in the confines of our little house, they shared a room into their teens, but one angry and loudly verbal about what outrages her, while the other merely points out the error of your ways with a few well-chosen words, or worse a cold blank stare. It was this daughter who put something to me that made me question my entire life.

I was commenting on fathers, parents that we’d known through our kids’ soccer(football) club, and how those that only had boys, didn’t seem to understand the girls place on the team, to the point where they thought our young girls were only there to make up numbers. This was a small number of people, but they tended to be associated with each other. I stated my opinion that, if they had girls of their own, they would have a different outlook. My daughters’ simple answer was, “It shouldn’t matter if they don’t have girls, girls have every right to be there. Don’t they have wives, and won’t their sons most likely have girlfriends?”

Now, I know what she said was obvious, but I hadn’t thought this way. I mean I expect my girls to be treated equally and with respect and I expect my boys to be respectful to women, but I hadn’t questioned how other people thought, or what other people did. I assumed everyone treated women and girls the way I did. The depths of my naivety was shocking to me, but something good came of it. I watch how women are treated differently in all societies, all sports, schools, politics, and when I am able, I call out misogyny and as long as my girls are around, and wifey, they will let me know when I’m wrong.

There seems to be a growing worldwide voice against the inequality between the sexes, but there is still a loud male voice trying to shout it down. I hope it isn’t swallowed up like the peace movement of the sixties or the green movement of the last few decades. There are a lot of competing voices trying to be heard, with some common sense we may come together.