Learner Dad: 'As we get to the end of summer, there has been almost no talk of divorce'

For a lot of parents the reopening of school is going to feel like the end of the beginning of the war against Covid-19

WE'RE gearing up for the reopening of school. Obviously the virus hasn’t gone away, but for a lot of parents this is going to feel like the end of the beginning of the war against Covid-19. (Even if does mean getting up before 8am for the first time since March 12. There is going to be so much shouting.) My first thought is that I live a charmed life. We’re all healthy here, no one in our house lost their job, everyone is in good form as we get to the end of summer, there has been almost no talk of divorce.

So what did I learn during the past few months? I think the most important thing is that the rainfall radar in Met Eireann doesn’t detect drizzle, so the cloudy and 19 degrees on the weather forecast is muggy and wet and everyone is just that bit more irritable. The government should look at fixing that if they expect us to staycation again next year (they’re already hinting at it), because kids can get very upset if their beach plans get shelved.

The next thing I learned is I have old knees and they’re never going to get better. I started doing the 9am Joe Wicks PE thing with the kids back in April and kept going long after they decided they’d prefer to lounge around in their pyjamas watching their Dad doing power squats. I ended up with a slightly trimmer waist and sore knees.

I stopped when Joe stopped about a month ago, and I haven’t gone looking for a replacement workout. My knees aren’t sore any more and my waist is back to ‘comfortable’. That’s the end of workouts for now, unless getting up early for school makes us so cranky we go for divorce and I need my waist back down for a photo on Tinder. I can’t see it working anyway. The dates would be a nightmare — you’re getting along fine this with a nice divorcee until you say ‘any chance you could give me a hand out of the chair, the knees aren’t what they used to be’. I’ll stick with married life — I think it suits me.

Homegrown tomatoes taste like tomatoes were meant to taste like. Picture: iStock 

Particularly now that my wife has discovered her green fingers. I think one of the reasons we work as a couple is I tend to assume everything will work out fine, while she’s over in the supermarket toppling a mountain of toilet paper into a trolley. Together, we’re dynamite. Anyway, she went mad planting fruit and vegetables in the uncertain days of April, so we’d have some food if/when the shops close. I’m just after eating two of her tomatoes — it brought me back to 1970s Kinsale, in a good way. We’ve done terrible things to tomatoes in the last few decades, it was amazing to taste the way they’re supposed to taste. If nothing else, the last five months have shown us how far we’ve gone from the simple pleasure of a decent tomato.

But mainly I’ve learned that our kids are endless fountains of fun. They’d wake up every morning, eat their breakfast a little bit too slowly and then set about enjoying themselves, whatever the weather. 

I’ve noticed in the last few weeks that they’re actively avoiding myself and the wife around the house, preferring to skive off into the trampoline and talk about whatever six- and eight-year-olds talk about. They seem very comfortable in their own place, with my son telling me the other day that he’d like to go into quarantine for a couple of weeks. If only he told me that earlier, we could have gone to France in July. As it stands, he’ll be stepping back into the world with his sister soon, and we’ll be back to a new normal. After observing them up close for the past five months, I’d say they’ll be alright.