How To Apologise To Your Child Today
My child is two - and, given that no monogamous lesbian has ever got pregnant by mistake, his was one of the most planned births ever to have happened. His mothers and I spent days and days, over the course of years, discussing everything from his name to his education, from the sharing of holidays to what will happen to him if one or more of us were to die. We agreed on all of it, and wrote it down in an adorably unofficial agreement that we all signed, less so that our decisions could exist in law, but more so that we would have a record of our promises to each other that we would stand by.
Today, I want to apologise to my son, for this occurrence that we did not predict, that we could not have predicted when we first started imagining his existence six years ago. He's only two, so he has no real understanding of the events, but I think it's important to talk to him, however lightly, about the way we have voted in a future of suspicious disconnection for him, a Europe unlike the one I grew up in. So I have imagined how I will talk to him about this, and my replies to his possible questions, with the hope that other parents will also try and speak to the next generation, and apologise to them, and give them the hope and political education to confront this new world.
Me: Hey, sweetheart, come over here darling, Daddy wants a word. Come and sit on my lap, gorgeous.
E: Daddy daddy daddy! I toys!
Me: Yes sweetheart darling, bring over a toy. Yes, bring your froggy, lovely. Aww, give him a nice cuddle, that's nice. So, today, I'm afraid--
E: You've fucked it, haven't you?
Me: What?
E: Admit it, you fucked up.
Me: Now, baby. Cuddles! Listen--
E: Do not absolve yourself of responsibility in the begetting of today's darkness. You were a blithe quisling prince in your unquestioning liberal complacency. You abetted the forces of imbecility with your self-regarding vituperation, you sleep-walked nightshirtless into this gaping pit. Today I reap the ghastliness of your self-satisfaction and unmooredness. Kein babytalk jetzt, Vati.
Me: Sweetness, I'm sorry, we just didn't see how--
E: You didn't see? YOU DIDN'T SEE? While you were sunning yourself on your two and a half yearly holidays for the last half-decade, slurping pesce spada on a Mediterranean clifftop like the unwitting dolt you cannot even imagine yourself to be, your hurting co-people were queuing for a one-person tin of beans in a makeshift food hall, buggered to fuckery by the top-down cash nightmare inflicted on them by a snotty, braying upper class you did so little to hand-grenade. Why have you fucked my future? Why could you not see beyond your own tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny nose?
Me: The blame should lie with Britain's press though, which colludes with the political establishment to pretend that there are no options for the dispossessed beyond a sort of capitalistic condescension. I just hope that you can grow up to...
E: Will I have the strength, though? Will I have the force required, after 16 more years of totalitarian shit-writings, to rise and counter the forces of rightwing despotism? What will the world even look like? You did not see, because you did not look, and today your reward is my seething.
Me: But--
E: Enough. I will now play with my train and perchance cast this terror from my mind. You may make me an egg for my supper, in silence.
Today, I want to apologise to my son, for this occurrence that we did not predict, that we could not have predicted when we first started imagining his existence six years ago. He's only two, so he has no real understanding of the events, but I think it's important to talk to him, however lightly, about the way we have voted in a future of suspicious disconnection for him, a Europe unlike the one I grew up in. So I have imagined how I will talk to him about this, and my replies to his possible questions, with the hope that other parents will also try and speak to the next generation, and apologise to them, and give them the hope and political education to confront this new world.
Me: Hey, sweetheart, come over here darling, Daddy wants a word. Come and sit on my lap, gorgeous.
E: Daddy daddy daddy! I toys!
Me: Yes sweetheart darling, bring over a toy. Yes, bring your froggy, lovely. Aww, give him a nice cuddle, that's nice. So, today, I'm afraid--
E: You've fucked it, haven't you?
Me: What?
E: Admit it, you fucked up.
Me: Now, baby. Cuddles! Listen--
E: Do not absolve yourself of responsibility in the begetting of today's darkness. You were a blithe quisling prince in your unquestioning liberal complacency. You abetted the forces of imbecility with your self-regarding vituperation, you sleep-walked nightshirtless into this gaping pit. Today I reap the ghastliness of your self-satisfaction and unmooredness. Kein babytalk jetzt, Vati.
Me: Sweetness, I'm sorry, we just didn't see how--
E: You didn't see? YOU DIDN'T SEE? While you were sunning yourself on your two and a half yearly holidays for the last half-decade, slurping pesce spada on a Mediterranean clifftop like the unwitting dolt you cannot even imagine yourself to be, your hurting co-people were queuing for a one-person tin of beans in a makeshift food hall, buggered to fuckery by the top-down cash nightmare inflicted on them by a snotty, braying upper class you did so little to hand-grenade. Why have you fucked my future? Why could you not see beyond your own tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny nose?
Me: The blame should lie with Britain's press though, which colludes with the political establishment to pretend that there are no options for the dispossessed beyond a sort of capitalistic condescension. I just hope that you can grow up to...
E: Will I have the strength, though? Will I have the force required, after 16 more years of totalitarian shit-writings, to rise and counter the forces of rightwing despotism? What will the world even look like? You did not see, because you did not look, and today your reward is my seething.
Me: But--
E: Enough. I will now play with my train and perchance cast this terror from my mind. You may make me an egg for my supper, in silence.
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