The Single Dad's Guide to the Galaxy: Parenting in the real world

by Roger McEwan

  Once I’m ready to start I attack the tasks that demand my brain be at its sharpest. This is usually study and is accompanied by classical music, which helps drown out distractions as well as creating an old-world, library-like ambiance.

  If I don’t have many appointments, lunch becomes the highlight of the day. For about two years three student colleagues and I had bonded into an international lunch club. We had representatives from Indonesia (Uri), China (Lei), Malaysia (Lyn) and New Zealand (me) and we spent an enjoyable hour chatting. I told Kiwi jokes that they didn’t understand but listened politely to, while they found New Zealand colloquialisms and the pronunciation of words like ‘bald’ hilarious. We were an eclectic group.

  Occasionally I had fun at their expense. It was never nasty, I just took advantage of the language differences that appealed to my sometimes infantile sense of humour. One memorable one ran as follows.

  ‘What do you do for fun in Malaysia, Lyn?’ It was an innocent question intended to spark up the conversation.

  ‘We go ten-pin bowling. It’s big back home.’

  ‘How often?’

  ‘There’s a league at my uni, so most weeks. I have balls!’

  I looked around. My colleagues’ faces were dead serious. Clearly they thought that Lyn having balls wasn’t remotely funny. I suppressed anything but a slight smile and carried the conversation on.

  ‘How many balls have you got?’

  ‘I have two balls.’

  ‘I was hoping you did.’

  ‘Pardon?’

  ‘Nothing, carry on.’ The rest of the table remained silent and sober.

  ‘I have a thirteen kg ball and an eleven I use for spares,’ Lyn informed me without a flicker.

  ‘Impressive. Have you played much in New Zealand?’

  ‘Some. I went with some friends and my supervisor, Deek.’

  ‘Deek?’

  ‘Deek.’

  ‘Richard?’

  ‘Yesssss.’ Lyn had a lovely way of drawing out words she emphasised.

  ‘Ahhh … It’s pronounced Dick.’ Balls and dick, this was eighties British comedy at its finest.

  ‘Deek.’ Lyn tried saying it slowly but there was no discernible change.

  ‘Close enough. Does Dick have his own balls?’

  ‘Deek had no balls.’

  I politely excused myself at that point, leaving behind confused looks from my charming colleagues. They would have heard me laughing all the way back to my office. I’m sure they’ll forgive me, especially Lyn.

  Two to three times a week after work I head to an instructor-led gym or karate class. The gym is attached to the university and the majority of people who attend the popular classes are young female students. I’m not sure why the classes aren’t attractive to males. A typical class consists of mainly eighteen to twenty-five-year-old females with a few males of a similar age and a thin sprinkling of male and female ‘mature athletes’, like me.

  The only time the gender ratio has been remotely close to fifty/fifty was when there were only two of us. I thought the trainer would cancel, in fact I hoped she would, but we did the entire fifty-five-minute class as per normal, which was surreal. There was no chance of taking the usual breather by blending into the crowd during that class.

  Apart from the fitness aspect, the other reason I like the gym and karate is that they extend the time until I head home to my lovely but quiet house. I even look forward to the gym on a Friday night when most people are keen to get home early or head somewhere for a drink. Nigel Marsh in his entertaining book Fat, Forty and Fired wrote about sitting in his car dreading going into the house at what he called ‘arsenic hour’. The time when the chaos of dinner, baths, homework and bedtime are all in full flight. Well, even given that Nigel had four children, after experiencing the polar opposite for years I’d take the chaos.

  Emptiness carries a weight that the TV’s chattering does little to lighten. I understand why people rush inadvisably into new relationships to try and recapture a ‘normal’ life. But without all the other necessary ingredients for a successful relationship, they’re simply jumping from the frying pan into the fire.

  When I finally return home some form of dinner is needed. As described, cooking and eating solo aren’t fun, but I need to eat and I’m usually starving so I’ll cobble together something that resembles dinner or devour the kebab purchased on the way home. Eating takes much less time than cooking, so after I pile the dishes on the bench I’m done. Cleaning the kitchen can wait for the morning. Or the next morning.

  I’m now free to hit the town, but at 8pm I never feel up to a bachelor-like ran-tan. If I can lever myself off the couch I can usually be found working, studying or writing. I sometimes contemplate going to the movies and for a short while I got into the habit of doing so once a week. If going to the movies by yourself sounds sad, it isn’t that bad. The aspect I missed the most was chatting afterwards. Everyone sees a slightly different movie and it’s interesting to hear what other people think. Now my children are older I’m able to have wonderful conversations with them after movies like The Life of Pi and what they thought about the tiger.

  THE WEEKEND

  That’s the week taken care of, almost. Friday night is now looming large. Woo-hoo. First a small confession. I’m not as devoted to exercise as I may have led you to believe and I’ve been known to miss the gym on Friday night in favour of a drink with friends and colleagues. The local pub is a popular spot and it soon becomes crowded, noisy and somewhat intimate. Getting to and from the bar requires nimble footwork in order to avoid rubbing up against too many people.

  I’ve noticed that our band of getting-merry men resembles the crowd at a tennis match. Heads turning left and right as women wander to and from the bar. It’s not an exclusive male group trait and I’ve seen female groups watching the same rally. I’m not sure whether I find it funny or depressing when I catch my own head tracking left or right.

  While it’s fun to catch up with colleagues over a drink, I try not to stay too long and leave well before the evening gets into full swing. The crowd changes, the music gets louder and ties and morals are loosened or abandoned.

  I start weekends slowly. Sleeping in usually isn’t an option as I’m a regular at the children’s sport whether I’m off duty or not. The children love me watching and I love to watch them charge about. I arrive with my obligatory coffee and, if the circumstances dictate, something greasy like a giant sausage roll for breakfast.

  I’m pleased to report that while watching my children play, I’m a model parent. I don’t care who wins or loses as long as everyone has fun. Really! I do prefer if our team wins, but you’ll never see me strutting up and down the sideline yelling obscenities at the referee.

  Saturday afternoon is blocked out for work or study, but unless there is a deadline imminent it’s hard to find the required motivation. Depending on the weather, I may potter around the garden, catch up on some reading or watch sport on TV. In the summer there’s cricket to follow and in the winter I love the NRL (Australian rugby league).

  That brings us to Saturday evening, which for many people is the social highlight of the week. A time for parties and gatherings. For me it’s a much quieter affair, partly by choice, partly by circumstance, and I usually spend Saturday night alone. It’s okay, but it leans towards dull and the option to kick back with a beer at 5pm is attractive. I had thought that having a drink related to the nautical time when the sun is over the yard arm. Research via QI informed me the sun is over the yard arm around 11am and was when sailors had their first tot of rum. Interesting but I’m sticking to 5pm all the same.

  As Saturday evening wears on, attention gets drawn once more towards food, but by Saturday the fridge and cupboards are suffering from Old Mother Hubbard syndrome. I’ve hopefully bought something on the way home from sport or wandered into the supermarket
but, if not, it’s a good opportunity to eat all those items that otherwise would be binned. Questionable dips, dodgy packets of cold meat, limp vegetables and assorted leftovers from the week. That’s a meal you won’t see on anyone’s menu planner.

  I have a tendency to fall asleep on my comfortable couch on Saturday night. Late in the evening, or early in the morning, I wake to a different game. Usually a different sport. The Cronulla Sharks playing the Melbourne Storm has become HNK Rijeka playing GNK Dinamo Zagreb. It’s disorientating for a few moments until I track down the remote and silence the unintelligible over-excited European commentator and struggle off to bed. When the children are with me I’m extra vigilant with security but when it’s only me, I’m lax. I have awoken to discover doors and windows unlocked or open. Cathy is once again appalled and surprised I haven’t been murdered in my bed.

  Finally it’s Sunday. I used to play golf religiously, which required an early start, but I haven’t swung a club in years after work and study got hectic. I make coffee, tidy the kitchen and watch the end of the sport I missed but hopefully recorded. At midday I head to my mum’s for Sunday lunch, a tradition since I can remember, before visiting the supermarket to once again stock up the cupboards and fridge for the imminent arrival of my hungry children.

  Just before 6pm it’s time to dive back into domestic duties and kick the house into shape. I do the vacuuming, make sure the bathrooms are clean and, of course, replenish the toilet rolls. Before you know it, Rog and Liv are back, scattering their possessions and dispelling the silence for another week. They always look taller …

  That, my friends, is the exciting, fashionable and glamorous lifestyle of a not so rich and famous single dad on his bachelor week. Keen to trade? One simple way to avoid joining me is to get home earlier on Friday night with your tie still knotted.

  Reflections

  Weeks by yourself as a single dad are often the hardest, but you get used to them. Filling the void with just anyone is a bad idea on many levels.

  If you are hanging out in a bar and can’t spot the oldest person within two minutes, it’s you. Go home.

  It’s okay to relax your domestic standards when no one is around, only don’t let them slide too far. There’s always the chance of a surprise visitor.

  Try to limit alcohol, and other avenues, as a means of escape. It’s an easy trap to fall into when the house is quiet.

  Exercise is a positive way to spend some of that time that’s in abundance. A hobby you love would also work. Try to find something productive.

  Empty and refill the jug when you have been away on holiday. Surprise flavours aren’t welcome.

  11. A Tale of Two Houses

  It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.

  Charles Dickens (writer, 1812-70)

  Fifty-fifty shared care is excellent in principle and a lot of research supports the view that children are best served when both parents are a major factor in their lives. Each parent takes full responsibility for raising the children but they split the time so the children get equal time with mum and dad. In my experience to make this work smoothly requires logistics and communication.

  My business experience has taught me that logistics aren’t easy. Plans are easy to develop conceptually – the difficulties may emerge only during implementation. The saying ‘No plan survives contact with the enemy’, attributed to Helmuth von Moltke the Elder, is very apt.

  An example from my early IT days highlighted this to me. Our company wanted to save money on a mailout to clients and decided to do it ourselves. It sounded simple. Print out the ten-page document for each client plus their policies, pop them all in a windowed envelope, post them and Bob’s your uncle. I was brought in to help make it happen. However, when I crunched the numbers I discovered that it would need our fastest printer to run non-stop for three weeks, be replenished with toner every few hours and with paper almost constantly. I passed on my initial concerns with some additional questions. Can we buy paper by the pallet? How will we get it to the seventh floor? Is the floor strong enough?

  The job was outsourced. Many colleagues have heard me say this, but the devil is always in the detail.

  Two homes meant the children had two bedrooms. Rose and I weren’t keen to duplicate the bedroom contents and therefore our logistics problem was how to transport the content of their rooms from house to house each Sunday. Clothes, books, toys, games, mementos, posters, school bags, piano, sports gear, game consoles, etc. Can you picture what that looks like? I can, because that’s more or less how we started in the early days. Except for the piano. Even today we resemble refugees escaping an oncoming army, fire, flood or pestilence taking our worldly possessions with us. I gave up trying to pare things down.

  ‘Liv, you don’t have to take so many teddies, you have dozens at your mum’s.’

  ‘I need them all.’

  ‘What about leaving Yeti behind? He’s huge.’

  During 2009 we became hooked on watching the Tour de France over breakfast. Liv fell in love with the toy yetis they handed out to the leader of the young rider classification and Cathy set out to get her one for a birthday present. The problem was that the Le Tour yeti was cute and the size of a loaf of bread. The one they sold was five times the size. Not deterred, Cathy bought one and then employed a range of origami techniques and folded him/her into a small cardboard box and posted him/her via the Royal Mail. Where the Customs form requires a description of the goods, she had written ‘he/she is a yeti’. Given this description the parcel had been inspected by Customs and there was a small cut in the packaging where I assume they tested his/her fur to make sure he/she wasn’t real. That must have made a strange scene, checking to see if a mythical creature’s fur was real …

  ‘He has to come, he’s family.’ Liv’s tone indicates the outrageous argument has concluded.

  ‘Fine,’ I say and wince immediately. I hate that particular four-letter F word. ‘Fine’ is the word some people, more commonly considered to be members of the fairer sex, use to end an argument when they consider they’re right but can’t stand to hear your voice any longer. In my experience it’s usually said with closed eyes because they can’t stand to look at you either.

  I turn to Rog, hoping to be able to set an example for Liv.

  ‘You don’t want to take big bear, do you?’

  ‘What?’

  He doesn’t have to say anything else. His look of incomprehension says it all. I’m beaten. Besides, does it really matter? As long as I can get everything in the car and make one trip it’s … fine. In hindsight, I suspect being able to take everything helped the children feel more in control of the two-house arrangement.

  Over the years Rose and I have tweaked our approach and whittled down the amount transported to a more manageable level. Aiding this has been Rog and Liv getting tired of the time it takes them to pack. We still transport a carload but, as they have grown, they’ve also acquired more stuff, especially clothes. Latterly I’ve made them responsible for their own packing but it pays to keep a wary parental eye on the process – if they forget things, it’s Rose and I that do the running around.

  COMMUNICATION AND COUNSELLING

  If you’re able to sort out the logistics there’s the tricky area of communication to overcome. Couples who’ve separated on the nicest terms must still struggle with communication, at least initially. After our separation the contact between Rose and I was the sort you have with Inland Revenue. It’s civil, reserved and with little enjoyment or enthusiasm.

  We were miles away from where we are today, but when I compared notes with other separated friends, we weren’t that bad. Bitterness, revenge and lawyers seem to be the common themes. Rose and my post-separation communication seemed at the friendlier end of the scale.

  There were a couple of issues where Rose and I differed. Even with our better-than-average communi
cation, there appeared little chance of navigating our way through them by ourselves. Rose suggested we try family counselling.

  The Kiwi bloke’s – i.e. my – attitude to counselling is that except in serious circumstances it’s not necessary. It’s a bit new-age, tree-hugging and hippyish. I’m fully aware that this attitude is dated and unhelpful but I’m a product of my environment (though I am trying to evolve). At the time counselling struck me as unnecessary and I thought we should sort out the issues ourselves. Rose made it clear she was keen to try counselling, and in the interests of world peace, or at least the piece of the world I was in, I agreed.

  A friend of Rose’s had recommended a counsellor and we arrived punctually for our first session. We’d been separated for around a month and in the car park I noticed that she’d bought herself a new car. I have no idea about the makes and models of cars but it was hard to miss that the dark-blue SUV was now a sleek-looking, fire-engine-red Mazda.

  ‘Nice car,’ I said to make conversation. ‘I thought you’d have bought a people mover, hun.’

  ‘You would, wouldn’t you,’ came the extremely icy reply. ‘And don’t call me hun.’

  I flinched internally at my slip. I found it difficult to stop calling her ‘hun’. I’d been doing it for sixteen years. All the same, I didn’t feel the use of the word warranted such a cool reaction. Before we separated Rose had been trying to convince me that we should buy a people mover but I hated them. They look like loaves of bread on wheels. Perfect for taxis but very uncool, and not desirable for small, fashionable families like ours. With my opinion no longer a factor I thought that she’d buy one.

  It was later that evening, as I recounted this exchange to Cathy, that I was reminded of the email I’d forwarded to Rose which had inadvertently contained part of a conversation I was having in which I had a rant against people movers. This explained the icy reply. Although I was just trying to be friendly, I’d managed to piss Rose off twice in a twelve-word sentence. It wasn’t an auspicious start to counselling but thankfully I was, at that stage, blissfully unaware of the second part of my faux pas.