Dad’s World with Jonathan deBurca Butler

AMERICAN poet Charles Bukowski was not noted for his sunny disposition. 

More often than not the world’s most famous post office worker could be found heaped on a barstool sodden with drink or arguing with a neighbour about noise — either his or theirs. One of his greatest works is the wonderfully grumpy, Sunday Kills More People than Bombs — the title offers sufficient explanation I think.

The poem came to mind when I woke on a recent offering of the Lord’s rest day to be greeted by howling gales and sheets of rain that resembled weapons of mythological gods. I gave a little sigh. I had two young boys that needed their day filled and on a day like that that was a tough ask for a parent.

It helped that neither myself nor Ciara had been out the night before and very little wine had been consumed, so both heads were clear and our capacity for patience was greatly enhanced. Also, we had an open invitation from both sets of grandparents. Before that, however, a morning had to be filled. Luke was OK. He had been up early enough so his nap time was coming around, but Fionn was a different prospect. I suggested I’d take him out: but where and what to do?

Out into the rain we went. I held onto Fionn as we made our way through the lakes and puddles to our car... a whole two yards outside the door. Once we were belted and buckled up, I rang my brother — working. I drove past our favourite coffee shop — closed.

Just then those same gods who were slashing sheets of rain at each other paused for a moment and offered inspiration.

“Go forth and look upon some art,” they suggested and they directed me towards the Hugh Lane Gallery on Parnell Square — they even cleared a parking space for me right out front.

I fully expected the whole thing to be a disaster, that Fionn would get bored after three minutes, keep asking to leave and that after five we would be doing exactly that. Was I right? I so rarely am. He loved it.

Before we even got into the museum proper he wanted to know where the “silly” electronic woman who was walking on the spot on an upright screen outside the door was going. I suggested we go and ask her.

“Hey,” he shouted, the rain still teeming down. “Where are you going?”

She didn’t reply. Fionn shrugged his shoulders and smiled.

When we got into the gallery proper, he pointed at a large bust in the foyer.

“Is that one your friends Daddy?”

“Yes,” I said. “He’s a great pal of mine, Michael Collins.”

“He’s really big,” said Fionn.

After crawling under a piece of wooden sculpture (not sure this was allowed) we went into a room dedicated to Sean Scully. Daddy had now become the tour guide-cum-art curator standing in front of Scully’s vast canvasses pointing at them and asking Fionn to tell me what he saw.

“Orange. Red. Blue. Black. Grey,”came the replies. It was hard to argue with his interpretation.

After visiting the kids corner and collaborating on a masterpiece of our own, we went to see what I had told him was a house belonging to a man named Sausages and Bacon.

He seemed intrigued. For the life of me I had no idea what he was expecting and I would have loved to have known. What would the house of a man called Sausages and Bacon look like in the mind of a three-and-a-half-year old. A butcher’s shop? A cafe?

Whatever it was, it wasn’t what he expected. He stood there looking at it for a minute.

“His mummy will be very cross,” he said. “It’s very messy.”

By the time we went out the door of the gallery, the rain had stopped. We had been in there for 45 minutes and every second of it had been delightful.

I had been to that gallery maybe 20 or 30 times before but I had never experienced it like this.