Dad Stuff

Je fauchée ma clavicule à judo la semaine denier; mon médecin mourait. Il n’est pas mauvais, ma fille gagner un prix por joueuse la jour á le foot!

Ada started working on the concept of a will recently; while she’s had the book Down The Back of the Chair for a while now, she’s clearly been mentally eliding the reference until she focused suddenly on it in the weekend. What is this “long-lost will of Uncle Bill”? How does it relieve the problem of not being able to afford to fix the errant car? After some explanation (“When people die, they don’t need their money any more, and they sometimes leave it to people”) the principle was firmly grasped.

A little later in the weekend, Ada sidled up to me and said, “I wish we had a long-lost will. You would be able to stay at home more and play with me.”

One of discoveries Sunday’s first excursion into the wonderful world of kiddy football was unexpected side effect of having spent three or so years working on concepts of playing nice (sharing, taking turns and so on), which is the furious, pitiable wailing that accompanies the discovery that in competitive sport you have to take your turn, not wait for it.

Much howling, a mix of self-pitying and righteous indignation, ensued. This is, the coach/referee assured me, entirely normal with three years olds, and I guess it would be. But still: an unexpected side effect; it encourages me in the belief, though, that the whole business is a good thing, not least because while “playing nice with others” is a life skill that’s valuable, so is “I’ll go get it myself, no-one’s going to give it to me.”

Other than that, and a plaintitave “I’m too cold, I want to go home”, swiftly fixed by another layer of jacketing, we had a ball, and Ada managed an absolute gem of a perfectly-executed tackle, timing a textbook interception of another player on his run into her goal.

After the game Ada worked on her dribbling some more, controlling the ball through 90 and 180 degree turns, and frustrating her mother’s attempts to regain control of the ball. I’m looking forward to see how she’ll handle next week.

Ada veut faire du foot. Je ne sais pas; mais toute façon papa, je aide.

Aujourd’hui nous faisons du coursé; nous sommes rentré avec protege-tibia et beaucoup petit les chaussures de football.

One of the more annoying arguments that I have noticed creeping into the arguments of vaccine deniers, as their arguments based on the fraudulent junk science produced by a shill for a law firm are being more widely understood as disreputable nonsense, is the notion of choice; choice is, apparently, an irrefutable, unassailable right; one may not over-ride the choices of parents who wish to expose their children to disease.

This one really gets on my tits.

My minor objection, one which is commonly voiced with regard to this line of argument, is that because vaccination relies to herd immunity to function effectively across a population this is a choice which is not self-contained. It’s an argument that ought to be treated with the contempt we’d hold for someone arguing they ought to be able to drive drunk because they’re only risking their own life—unless they only drive on private roads, that’s simply untrue. Even the most fervent libertarians usually recognise that the right to swing your fist ends at my nose; the right to kill your kids with whooping cough likewise ends at my daughter’s respiratory tract.

Which leads me into the second, less commonly articulated, but, to my mind, more important point. Children are, in fact “someone else.” We do not allow parents to decide not to educate their children, or to beat them, or hire them out as prostitutes. If parents claim this is undue interference in their rights we say, well, tough luck—because my right as a parent ends at my daughter’s nose. I may not starve her, beat her, or deprive her of an education. Why should I be allowed to prevent her from receiving provably valuable medical treatments?

Crane on the Dock

Autumn has begun to feel like autumn; for the first month or so we enjoyed a late summer of cool (but not cold), crisp, brilliantly clear days; that particular spell of the closing of summer and the opening of the colder season which is perhaps my favourite time of year.

That is rounding to a close now; the weather is closing in with early nights, pitch black by the time I trek home from work; enlivened by the lights of the harbour, perhaps, but during the working week the only glimpses of sun are those of a morning walk or time snatched from the office during the day; not yet, though, closing me in the suffocating period where the day is black when leaving the house as well as when arriving back at it.

Red Leaves of Autumn

There are pronounced pleasures, though; the ducks at the Botanic Gardens have not grown fat, as they do in Spring, on the offerings of the people rushing to offer bread to ducklings; they’re eager to enjoy the ministrations of a small girl and her gifts, and my heart soars as my spring enjoys her autumn.

To elaborate on my earlier comments: when a movie starts with a montage of one character’s life which runs through a lost pregnancy (or possibly news of infertility, it’s hard to tell), a lifelong regret at not having fulfilled a dream, the death of one of the principal character’s wife and then plunges into him going to court and being committed to elderly care with the resultant loss of his home, I find myself thinking a number of things; high amongst them are “No wonder Ada wanted to re-watch this with me so she could ask questions about what’s going on after seeing it at her creche’s movie day”, and “What the hell? Did her creche really think this was a great movie for three year olds?”

(And yes, I know a three year old is probably missing/glossing over a bunch of stuff in Up that I might find disturbing or distressing; the fact she wanted to re-watch it with me so she could ask questions rather suggested she noticed something was up, though.)

I can also add that when there’s the scene where Fredrickson sets the chairs back in the house, the most poignant question you can be asked is, “Daddy, why is he putting the chairs back up and sitting in them?”, because getting “Because he misses his wife” out is something of a challenge at that point.

Is it a good movie? Absolutely. But definitely one that may require a bunch of talking through with a small.

(On the other hand it’s less disturbing than Ice Age, which Ada doesn’t, unlike Ice Age 2, want to watch again.)

“Shall we if there’s good music on the radio?”

“No. I want Nightwish.”

“I see. Which Nightwish song do you want?”

“The one where he is running away because they think he has done something wrong.”

Daddy’s little metalhead.

Also, Up. Ada likes it. I found it verging on the harrowing. Good, you understand, but, my, that’s a pile of emotive in a kid’s movie.

Last night I was taking my brother-in-law and niece home from my sister-in-law’s wedding; there was a spirited disagreement between cousin, and the adults about whose house was closer to the wedding venue; when all other arguments failed, the trump card for the five year old was:

Mummy says our house is closest and Mummy is younger than you and old people lose their memory and forget things so I’m right.

The wedding was a great afternoon, and Ada was a complete darling as a flower girl, alongside her cousin; they led their aunt down the aisle perfectly. She capered about during the vows, earning her the kind of stern finger-wagging only a five year old can give a younger relative; her response was to hold the finger and dance about some more, fortunately without whacking the bride or bridesmaids.

The Wellington Aero Club had an open day on Saturday. For a little girl who spent happy hours poking around racing cars in Te Papa a few months ago who likes to go to the airport to watch the planes, and her daddy, this seems pretty much like a heaven-sent afternoon, and that’s how it turned out.

As well as the pictured cockpit sessions in the pictured CT-4E and CJ6 Nanchang, Ada got chances to hop into the pilot’s seat of a Sounds Air Cessna Caravan, although we missed out on the Trojan when the owner needed a bio break.

While I attempted to explain the Trojan and Corsair’s features for aircraft carriers—the Corsair had it’s wings up—I don’t think Ada really grasped the idea of planes that land and take off boats.

The only real disappointments of the day were the tiny two-seat plane, whose owners shut up shop just as we arrived to have a look (I suspect Ada may have been so wedded to it because it looked, well, child-sized), and missing out on a chance to go up for a flight in the Catalina, which had run out of seat allocations by the time I asked. She was, however, a little trooper about it; she was really upset, but avoided any kind of tantrum. I need to make it up to her with a trip on a plane when I can afford it.

One not-so-minor irk, though: a few women earlier in the day had heard my plan and suggested that the whole business was about Daddy using Ada as an excuse to do something. Yes, yes, I know it’s a standard cultural trope that men only do things with their kids to have an excuse to buy things for themselves, and that little girls can’t possibly be interested in aircraft. It’s a bullshit sexist trope, too.