Learner Dad: I wish we’d named them Traolach and Caoimhe

Picture: iStock 

A funny thing happened on my way to work this morning. I ended up behind the school bus that had collected my two kids about 20 minutes earlier. And I felt a bit sad.

Not about the school bus. Seriously, we love our new life in East Cork, and the fact that a lovely man picks up our kids in the morning and drops them home later is one of our favourite things. But it just felt odd that they were there, right in front of me, but moving along in a different world.

A few years back, a writer friend of mine wrote about the melancholy of watching his kids drift away as they took their own path in life. It seemed a bit dreamy and lyrical to me, and I thought it might have written it after a few pints. But now I get it.

The same friend, whose kids are about five years older than mine, was the first one who told me that parenting was about phases. We all go through more or less the same experiences as our kids grow older – and now it’s my turn to start missing my kids, even though the older one isn’t even ten, and they’re not going anywhere for ages.

There’s a touch of karma here. My mother loves all her kids and hated when we moved away, so much so that she used to get a sore back when I would go back to Dublin after a weekend at home. We called it emigrant’s back. (If you were to choose one word to describe our family, it wouldn’t be sympathetic.) I was having the time of my life living in Dublin – I could never understand why she wouldn’t be happy for me. But I get it now.

Someone was waving and making funny faces at me out the back of the school bus because that’s what kids are supposed to do at the back of the bus. They obviously love their 20 minutes of buddy time before heading into school.

 My two are always telling funny bus stories. I’m genuinely delighted for them. But it was weird to feel disconnected from them, just as it must have been for my mother 30 years ago.

We’re led to believe that nature invented teenagers so we’d be relieved when our children finally leave the house. But it looks like I’ll mind the gap as my kids go their own way. I reckon that pang behind the school bus this morning was my first step towards emigrant’s back. My mother would get a great laugh out of it.

Don’t get me wrong – I’m basing my future sanity on my kids moving out in their 20s, so I can get my life back for a decade before I start to wilt away. I want them to leave for their sake, too – it’s rubbish that people are forced to live with their parents into their 30s now. As I said, I lived my best life in Dublin during my 20s.

But I hope they don’t go too far. I wish we’d named them Traolach and Caoimhe because they'd never last long in places like Australia and America, where no one can pronounce their name.

Our son will probably stay relatively local - he’s never happier than when he’s at home with all his stuff around him. His sister, however, could end up on another planet. She’s always looking to try the new thing. If my mother got a bad back because I went to Dublin, can you imagine how I’ll feel when my young one moves to Mars?

It’s mid-afternoon now as I write this, the bus will have them home in five minutes. My son will come in here and word-for-word relay the chat he had with his friend about the latest game on Roblox - that can sometimes run for over five minutes. His sister will probably slope off to her room and read Harry Potter for half an hour to get a bit of downtime. These are the glory days.