The old men and the sea
Navigating the joys and tedium of parenting while bonding with my toddler in the park.
Killing time with a toddler is mind-bendingly dull.
Sure, there are moments of intense beauty and wonder as you revel in your child’s awestruck delight at something as trivial as a cardboard box or the reflection from some coloured glass. You can put on a piece of music or favourite film and watch their brain expand almost in real time, as new thoughts and experiences stimulate their cerebral cortex1. Even the hardest of hearts will soften as they watch a 22-month-old stagger around the dining room wearing a princess dress and clutching a toy monkey. But also: it can be soul-crushingly boring, too.
Our daughter was off nursery with a virus for most of this week, which left me with long mornings to fill while we waited for her to recover. Sitting around the house is a recipe for a boredom-induced breakdown, so I resolved to chuck her in the pushchair and go for a walk in the April sunshine.
There’s a local park about a twenty minute walk away which has a miniature boating pond – it’s a failsafe fallback when the kids need to burn off some energy and us tired parents need a ready-made distraction. I wandered vaguely in its direction as Robin grumbled and fussed from the pushchair.
Thankfully, the boaters were already out and setting sail as we arrived. One old man was slowly pushing a wheelbarrow around the perimeter of the pond, scooping out water sedge from the silty bottom with a long-handled fork and carting it off elsewhere to make glistening green piles of vegetation. I stopped to watch.
Gradually more elderly men arrived with their boats in hand. Some of them acknowledged us (or, at least, the toddler) with a wave, others kept their eyes low and proceeded to the water to carefully launch their model boats. I wondered whether they constructed the boats themselves, or whether they bought them ready-made. I started to speculate about the social conventions of this kind of club: if someone turned up with a huge, expensive-looking model boat that was clearly pre-built, would they be shunned by the other boaters? Who was in charge of this thing?
The men began to coalesce around their boats as some of them cursed the weeds and pulled their models out of the water, now accompanied by a dangling tail of dripping green matter despite the work of the toiling wheelbarrowist earlier. One man left his pristine-looking boat splayed out on the grass as he returned to his car for a forgotten tool, the vessel looking strange and alien lying on its side with its normally-unseen bottom exposed and uncomfortable.
As I stood gently rocking the pushchair in the warm spring air, I began to notice the clear social delineations amongst this group: like any random group of men I’ve been part of, there were subtle body language signals and divisions that set apart even this group of hobbyist retirees. The man with the smart shoes and very clean mountaineering jacket, stood alongside the bloke with just one ragged sock pulled up almost to his knee. The handwarmers worn by most of the model sailors, some of which were clearly designed to incorporate the remote control for the model, and some which obviously weren’t. The chap who kept repeating his efforts at banter to his neighbours who steadfastly ignored him. The gent who was sitting on a bench, away from everyone else, but still somehow part of the gathering. And then me, watching from the sidelines with a baby in tow: the only female presence in this gathering of pensioners and pontoons.
Their race began: the boats gradually drifted towards a floating marker buoy and someone’s speaker bleeped out a countdown. An flotilla of models began to drift, leaning on the wind as a gaggle of mostly-elderly men flocked after them, stiff fingers working the controls and sensible shoes stepping around the piles of goose shit2.
Robin was fidgeting, bored. I decided we’d extracted the maximum entertainment value from the model boats and turned and headed for home. We walked past the pond and I looked back once more to see the huddling old men, together and yet silent, walking up and down the edge of the water together with their boats like proxies for feelings and conversation.
We need our props, perhaps. I was heartened seeing these men spending time together, socialising in the awkward, jerky way that men sometimes do. I wondered if I was seeing a future version of myself, before realising I was already doing it right at that moment: I too was a lonely man, that day. I too had left the house with my bulky “prop” – the pushchair with the toddler. I knew from years of experience that a baby in a pram is a great conversation starter… or ender. Bored of making small talk with someone by a coffee shop? “Anyway, I better get this one home for her nap”, you can say – no questions asked. And consciously or not, I too had found myself drawn to this location to spend time in the company of other men, one way or another.
Mini-feels this week
Two wheels good
I’ve bought my son a new bike for his sixth birthday, his third since he first learned to sit on a saddle at 18 months old. I don’t think he subscribes to this newsletter so I’m happy to risk spoiling his surprise on the 24th.
This bike, for the first time, has gears. I’m trying to decide how to present this development to him: the obvious thing is to appeal to his sense of danger by telling him they’ll let him go faster, which I suppose is technically true. Harder to sell him on, though, is the explanation that he’ll also have to work harder at pedalling in order to take advantage of the new gearing options.
It also brings all the challenges of gears too: don’t change when you’re stationary! Remember to shift down before you go uphill! I foresee lots of dropped chains and oily fingers in my future.
The goal, though, is to gear up3 for longer riders together where we’re both on our bikes. We’ve been out for a few medium-distance rides together but after a couple of miles he’s usually complaining. I’m hoping that a bigger, more capable bike will have a knock-on effect… so watch this space for a future newsletter cherishing the wonder (or chaos) of a bike ride with your kid.
Footnotes
This is the second newsletter in a row where I’ve used the word “cortex”.
In fairness, it may well have been duck shit. I’m not an avian excrement expert.
Sorry.