PARENTING

Can I Call You Dad?

The small changes that change everything

Just before his eighth birthday, Conall came to me and said “Can I call you Dad?”. Until then, I’d always been “Daddy”.

It was inevitable, of course. I’d already overheard him with his friends referring to me as “my dad”.

But you always think you’ll have more time. It seemed too soon to know that he would never refer to me in that familiar, touching way, that he would not always be my baby boy.

The moments add up, and a few we remember in detail. I can tell you the last time he held my hand; at a crowded Christmas market in 2019 when he had just turned seven.

But most of these small milestones fall behind us and we don’t even notice until much later that we’ve passed them. The last time I pulled him in his wagon. The last time I carried him up the stairs to bed. The last time I sang him a song to help him sleep.

We rarely get the chance to know it’s the last time, and there’s a melancholy there that strikes to the heart.

But that’s the way it’s supposed to be, I guess, and it doesn’t pay to reflect on it too much. Instead, we cherish our memories and take comfort in believing, in knowing that they will grow into strong, kind, people. And that’s something to be treasured even more.