My September Son

Friday Fireside | #3 | Three years a father and still searching for words

Zack will be three this month.

But first, he's to shake off the stomach bug that felled the family last weekend. And while no one wants their children to be ill, there’s something strangely satisfying about looking after a slightly sick Zack. He wants to be held and he nods off in my arms. He’s a baby again, while looking so much older. And he reminds me that the “up” in growing up is only half the story.

September brings long shadows brilliant and bold, over the garden wall and in through his bedroom window. We sit together and I tell him how they are formed. The shadows. And later he explains to his mum about the sun and the dark and the things in the way. And when I take the rubbish out the back, I notice the light again.

As Zack plays in his sandpit, Tolstoy tells me about the last days of Moscow, 1812. There too it is September. The light there also is brilliant. But I've grown wary of whenever Tolstoy speaks of the sun. He too uses it to mark shadows in the story.

A year ago, Zack had not yet learned to walk. He had a few words and a lot of babble. His skin, bandaged and balmed with beeswax, was recovering from the long months after his winter Covid. The virus that first inflamed his eczema.

That sickness was not slight. He came back from hospital with a bear in a red suit. And now Teddy lies in the crook of his arm, a toy with a tale from the times of Corona.

On the edge of autumn, Tolstoy talks of bees, and Hardy, of the stars. Companions in my ears as I rock to sleep Zack's baby sister Mimi. She laughs when she wakes up, and I pause the story to take her in my arms.

I wanted to be a dad long before I knew what it would mean. I think I was some moth making for the moon. Now I am here on this strange planet, watching them play together, listening to their shrieks and laughter. And remembering the past means reminding the present it didn't always exist.

Because nothing prepared me for this. The size of this feeling, its strength and solidity. Its selfish way of sweeping everything else aside. And making all other plans seem small.

Zack's excited about his birthday. He can't remember his first two, so it's as though it has never happened before. There will be cake and candles, he says. There will, I say.

And for a moment, I cannot remember my autumns. They rise as myth in my mind, formless before today. Apocryphal autumns, in Sheffield, in London, Oxford and New York.

This is our first. It will come as the heat breaks and the wind turns. We'll go looking for it. You and I. This morning he picked up a leaf, half green, yellowing to brown. And ate the blackberries juicy on the bush.

I'm excited, Zack tells me.

So am I, my September son.

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