...continued
I lie expectantly - but in vain – as one by one they come home from school; I strain my ears to fragments of excited conversation that are just too quiet to decipher; eventually, in despair, I turn on the telly, but where’s the fun in that without all the arguments about who wants to watch what? So I turn it off again, only to be re-exposed to the intolerable sounds of my family enjoying themselves without me.
When later, urged on by their mother, they do come up, they squirm and avoid eye contact, while sneaking glances at their watches, terrified that they may be missing that rare thing – a new episode of the Simpsons. These modern children, who spend hours in computer chatrooms and run up phone bills in excess of Estonia’s GNP, talking for hours about nothing at all, are rendered mute and insensible when confronted with complicated concepts like "How are you?" and "What did you get up to today?"
When I release them by pretending to be tired, there’s an unheard sigh of relief. I sink into the pillows, despondent. This whole experience is bringing out an atavistic, and self-deluding, male supremacist side of me that I don’t recognise: I want them to be thrown into confusion and distress that the man on whom they all depend is lying prone and helpless. Why is there no wailing and gnashing of teeth? How dare they so much as even smile while their hunter-gatherer lies abed?
But my voice will be heard. The hospital have provided me with an ingenious device for putting my socks on – not necessarily a priority when you can’t sit up properly but it does double up as a broom handle substitute for banging on the floor in a solid head-of-the-family sort of way. As the children settle down to channel hop, I issue three sharp raps. The result is as immediate as it is predictable: the fruit of my loins turn the volume up on the telly.
I admit defeat and crawl under the bedclothes. What particularly distresses me is that their life goes on, apparently untouched by my not playing any part in it. Of course, I knew this would happen one day, I’ve even on occasions looked forward to it and the few years of freedom it will afford us before they put us into one of those Nursing Homes which is always featured in the local press under headlines like Another Mysterious Death in Local Nursing Home.
My wife comes home, brings me a cup of tea and a takeaway she’s picked up on the way back from work. She calms me down as I tell her about the perfidy and ingratitude of today’s children. She patiently explains that I should try to understand their point of view. Suddenly, their father, who they’ve always been able to lean on in times of trouble, has been reduced to a weak and vulnerable state. Of course the poor things don’t know how to deal with it.
As so often happens, she leaves me with the impression that I have been grossly unfair to my children. And, as so often happens, I find it hard to resist saying "Good!"
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