“Oh my god she looks soooo like her dad.”
I hear that a lot. No really, a lot. As in all the time. I know those words should make me happy – there’s a reason I chose this giant-hearted, fiercely loyal, twinkly-eyed, eternally-teasing, insanely irritating but stupendous man to make little humans with – but it always catches in my throat, like an over enthusiastic pigeon gagging on a discarded baguette. Because even if she did come out of my vagina looking like Carlo without the beard, the indignation I would feel would be similarly fiery. You don’t carry a child for nine months, aka A REALLY FUCKING LONG TIME, and watch as all your internal organs take up residence somewhere around your ears and your ribcage slowly and awkwardly opens like a stubborn tin of tuna; skip the extra fun nights out because being awake past 9pm is physically impossible and the realisation that alcohol really does make everything, including people, more fun is just too depressing; avoid tubes and buses at all costs because the smell of other human beings makes you gag; mainline Gaviscon and Rennies because you have heartburn all the damn time and take to wearing sanitary towels as a constant precaution because an errant sneeze is enough to make you wet yourself (I won’t even go into the giving birth bit, because this sentence is already too long – plus I wrote about it all in pretty graphic detail in the months afterwards, if you fancied a terrifying gander towards the beginning of the blog), so that your child can come into the world not looking like you. The looking-like-you bit is your prize. (Albeit, one that could do with some work.)
I try and tell people all the time that she’s a delicious mix of the two of us and that, actually, pictures of me as a baby and her as a baby are strikingly similar, but since I can’t walk around with baby photos of me to shove maniacally in people’s faces as proof (the equivalent of one of those parents who shows you a slideshow of their newborn and the whole, bloody birthing process, placenta and all, at the merest whiff of mutual experience), I just get one of those “yeah, sure” looks. I think it’s the curly hair; so different to my defiantly dull, straight hair. It’s also quite clearly bleached, which somehow induces complete face blindness when it comes to imagining me with child’s hair.
The thing is, some of my friends’ babies don’t just have different features, they’re an entirely different colour to them. I’ll never get those dangerous looks on streets or at stations or in airports. I’ll never have to justify her to an official or qualify my right and existence as her parent to someone in a uniform. I won’t have to patiently explain, again and again, that my surname might be different to hers, but she is still very much mine. I won’t have to take her birth certificate with us, plus a spare, to different countries, just in case someone raises a red flag. I know that in so many ways I am so lucky and I’m being petulant.
And yet.
It rankles. Like the tiny, turned back corner of a rug or toast crumbs in the butter, it manages to manifest itself into something enormous and ugly and it takes every ounce of strength to just flash them a tight little smile and agree that, yes, her curls are just like his, while trying to resist the urge to thump them.
But therein lies the eternal lesson that every parent has to learn. Your children aren’t yours. Yes, you safeguard them and feed them and remember to wash their clothes and change their bedding and make sure they brush their teeth occasionally, and yes, you need to teach them things that they can’t learn in a book or from their school teacher; but you don’t own them. They’re not things that you keep. They are stubbornly, fiercely, joyfully their own, from the second they come into this world, regardless of whether they’ve got Daddy’s curly hair or Mummy’s dimples. (So basically, if she starts looking like me when she’s older, I’ll be sure to do my victory dance in private.)