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  The Firstborn

  A Reflection on Fatherhood

  Laurie Lee

  To Jessy’s Mother

  I

  She was born in the autumn and was a late fall in my life, and lay purple and dented like a little bruised plum, as though she’d been lightly trodden in the grass and forgotten. Then the nurse lifted her up and she came suddenly alive, her bent legs kicking crabwise, and her first living gesture was a thin wringing of the hands accompanied by a far-out Hebridean lament.

  This moment of meeting seemed to be a birth-time for both of us; her first and my second life. Nothing, I knew, would be the same again, and I think I was reasonably shaken. I peered intently at her, looking for familiar signs, but she was convulsed as an Aztec idol. Was this really my daughter, this purple concentration of anguish, this blind and protesting dwarf?

  Then they handed her to me, stiff and howling, and I held her for the first time and kissed her, and she went still and quiet as though by instinctive guile, and I was instantly enslaved by her flattery of my powers.

  Only a few brief weeks have passed since that day, but already I’ve felt all the obvious astonishments. New-born, of course, she looked already a centenarian, tottering on the brink of an old crone’s grave, exhausted, shrunken, bald as Voltaire, mopping, mowing, and twisting wrinkled claws in speechless spasms of querulous doom.

  But with each day of survival she has grown younger and fatter, her face filling, drawing on life, every breath of real air healing the birth-death stain she had worn so witheringly at the beginning.

  Now this girl, my child, this parcel of will and warmth, fills the cottage with her obsessive purpose. The rhythmic tides of her sleeping and feeding spaciously measure the days and nights. Her frail self-absorption is a commanding presence, her helplessness strong as a rock, so that I find myself listening even to her silences as though some great engine was purring upstairs.

  When awake, and not feeding, she snorts and gobbles, dryly, like a ruminative jackdaw, or strains and groans and waves her hands about as though casting invisible nets.

  When I watch her at this I see her hauling in life, groping fiercely with every limb and muscle, working blind at a task no one can properly share, in a darkness where she is still alone.

  She is of course just an ordinary miracle, but is also the particular late wonder of my life. So each night I take her to bed like a book and lie close and study her. Her dark blue eyes stare straight into mine, but off-centre, not seeing me.

  Such moments could be the best we shall ever know – these midnights of mutual blindness. Already, I suppose, I should be afraid for her future, but I am more concerned with mine.

  I am fearing perhaps her first acute recognition, her first questions, the first man she makes of me. But for the moment I’m safe; she stares idly through me, at the pillow, at the light on the wall, and each is a shadow of purely nominal value and she prefers neither one to the other…

  Meanwhile as I study her I find her early strangeness insidiously claiming a family face.

  Here she is then, my daughter, here, alive, the one I must possess and guard. A year ago this space was empty, not even a hope of her was in it. Now she’s here, brand new, with our name upon her; and no one will call in the night to reclaim her.

  She is here for good, her life stretching before us, twenty-odd years wrapped up in that bundle; she will grow, learn to totter, to run in the garden, run back, and call this place home.

  Or will she? Looking at those weaving hands and complicated ears, the fit of the skin round that delicate body, I can’t indulge in the neurosis of imagining all this to be merely a receptacle for Strontium 90. The forces within her seem much too powerful to submit to a blanket death of that kind.

  But she could, even so, be a victim of chance; all those quick lively tendrils seem so vulnerable to their own recklessness – surely she’ll fall on the fire, or roll down some crevice, or kick herself out of the window?

  I realise I’m succumbing to the occupational disease, the father-jitters or new-parenthood-shakes, expressed in: ‘Hark, the child’s screaming, she must be dying.’ Or, ‘She’s so quiet, d’you think she’s dead?”

  As it is, my daughter is so new to me still that I can’t yet leave her alone. I have to keep on digging her out of her sleep to make sure that she’s really alive.

  She is a time-killing lump, her face a sheaf of masks which she shuffles through aimlessly. One by one she reveals them, while I watch eerie rehearsals of those emotions she will one day need; random, out-of-sequence but already exact, automatic but strangely knowing – quick pucker of fury, a puff of ho-hum boredom, a beaming after-dinner smile, perplexity, slyness, a sudden wrinkling of grief, pop-eyed interest, and fat-lipped love.

  It is little more than a month since I was handed this living heap of expectations, and I can feel nothing but simple awe.

  What have I got exactly? And what am I going to do with her? And what for that matter will she do with me?

  I have got a daughter, whose life is already separate from mine, whose will already follows its own directions, and who has quickly corrected my woolly preconceptions of her by being something remorselessly different. She is the child of herself and will be what she is. I am merely the keeper of her temporary helplessness. Even so, with luck, she can alter me; indeed, is doing so now. At this stage in my life she will give me more than she gets, and may even later become my keeper.

  But if I could teach her anything at all – by unloading upon her some of the ill-tied parcels of my years – I’d like it to be acceptance and a holy relish for life. To accept with gladness the fact of being a woman – when she’ll find all nature to be on her side.

  If pretty, to thank God and enjoy her luck and not start beefing about being loved for her mind. To be willing to give pleasure without feeling loss of face, to prefer charm to the vanity of aggression, and not to deliver her powers and mysteries into the opposite camp by wishing to compete with men.

  In this way, I believe – though some of her sisters may disapprove – she might know some happiness and also spread some around.

  And as a brief tenant of this precious and irreplaceable world, I’d ask her to preserve life both in herself and others. To prefer always Societies for Propagation and Promotion rather than those for the Abolition or Prevention of.

  Never to persecute others for the sins hidden in herself, nor to seek justice in terms of vengeance; to avoid like a plague all acts of mob-righteousness; to take cover whenever flags start flying; and to accept her faults and frustrations as her own personal burden, and not to blame them too often, if she can possibly help it, on young or old, whites or coloureds, East, West, Jews, Gentiles, Television, Bingo, Trades Unions, the City, school-milk, or the British Railways.

  For the rest, may she be my own salvation, for any man’s child is his second chance. In this role I see her leading me back to my beginnings, reopening rooms I’d locked and forgotten, stirring the dust in my mind by re-asking the big questions – as any child can do.

  But in my case, perhaps, just not too late; she persuades me there may yet be time, that with her, my tardy but bright-eyed pathfinder, I may return to that wood which long ago I fled from, but which together we may now enter and know.

  II

  She is now only a few months old and at the beginning of it all, rolling her eyes for the first time at the world. A dangerous temptation for any father, new to the charms and vanities of parenthood, to use her as a glass in which to adore his own image
, to act miracles and be a god again.

  Inert, receptive, captive and goggle-eyed, she offers everything for self-indulgence; her readiness, for instance, to restore one’s powers to astonish, and to be shown the whole world new. She laughs easily already, demanding no effort of wit, gulping chuckles at my corniest gestures – a built-in appreciation so quick and uncritical it seems to promise a life-long romance.

  But I am late to parenthood and I know I must beware; my daughter and I stand in mutual danger; so easy for either of us to turn the other’s head, or for me to ruin her with too much cherishing. A late only child is particularly vulnerable, of course – a target for attentions she might be happier without or liable to be cast into roles that have little to do with her nature in order to act out some parental fantasy.

  Nevertheless, here she is, just a few months old, clear clay to work wonders with. No doubt, if I could, I’d mould her into something wispy and adoring, but fortunately she’ll have none of that. Like any other child, she is a unique reality, already something I cannot touch, with a programme of her own packed away inside her to which she will grow without help from me.

  Even so, there is much I want to show and give her; and also much I would protect her from. I would spare her the burden of too many ambitions, and too many expectations, such as the assumption that simply because she is mine she must therefore be both beautiful and clever. I’ll try not to improve her too much, or use her in games of one-uppance, or send her climbing too many competitive beanstalks; and I’d like to protect her from the need to go one better than her parents in order to improve their status by proxy. One can’t help sympathising with the dad who says: ‘I never had a chance myself but my kid’s going to have the best.’ But the result very often is a stranger in the house, a teen-age aristocrat served by parent serfs, forced to talk and dress a cut above the old folks and to feel little save guilt and embarrassment.

  At the same time I’d best protect her from the opposite kind of freakishness – that of using her as a sociological guinea-pig. For next to circus-trained animals, few creatures look so fundamentally awkward as children who have been forced into experimental postures of behaviour in order to indulge some theoretical fidget of their parents. One feels that children should be left to enjoy their conservative birthright, and not be conscripted as secondhand revolutionaries. A child can, and should, when the time is ripe, initiate its own revolutions.

  What I want for my child is an important beginning, a background where she can most naturally grow. My own childhood was rough, but it was a good time too, and I want her to have one like it. I was lucky to be raised in a country district, rich with unpackaged and unpriced rewards; and although we were materially poor (and I don’t wish that she should be poor) I believe there are worse things than that kind of poverty. There is, for instance, the burden of abundance, often as stultifying as want, when too many non-stop treats and ready-made diversions can mount almost to infanticide, can glut a child’s appetites, ravish it of wonder, and leave it no space or silence for dreams.

  So I would like to give my child chances to be surprised, periods of waiting to sharpen her longings, then some treat or treasure that was worth looking forward to, and an interval to enjoy and remember it.

  I was brought up in a village when childhood and the countryside were simply their own rewards, when electricity had not obliterated the old ghosts in the corners, and songs were not changed once a week. That time and condition can’t come again, but I’d like my daughter to know what is left of it. For it still contains people undazed by street lamps, who know darkness and the movements of stars, and who can talk about mysteries the townsman has forgotten, and who are not entirely cut off from the soil’s live skin by insulations of cement and asphalt.

  I want to take my daughter to this surviving world – not as a visitor, but to be a native in it. So that she may accept it simply as part of creation, and take its light into her eyes and bones. To know the natural intimacy of living close to the seasons, where they are still the gods in possession; to feel the quick earth stir when she treads upon it, to take the smokeless wind in her mouth, to watch the green year turn, lambs drop and stagger, birds hatch, grass grow and seed. To have for her horizons the banks of woods rather than the rented air of office blocks, and to be accompanied on her walks by the coloured squares of fields rather than raddled posters for fags and petrol. Not later, but as soon as she can use her eyes, I’d like her to have this world to live in, so that she can know it and regard it as a place to belong to, and not just a piece of prettiness to be gawped at from a motor car.

  I suppose the country can only properly be given to a child – as from birth it was given to me. And as it was given to me, so I’d like to show it to her, and see it again through her eyes – the veils of blue rain wandering up from Wales, streaking the sky before they hit the ground; copper clouds of thunder towering over the Severn, mist wiping great holes in the hillside, the beech-tops breaking into a storm of rooks, the light on the cows in the evening… And there will be the naming of plants (if I can remember them), explaining the differences between daws and ravens, collecting woodlice, earwigs, frogs and grasshoppers; and the attempts to tame a fox. I must also refind the valley’s traditional playground – the caves and holes in the quarries, Roman snails on the walls and fossilled fish in the stones, the bridge of willows across the stream, pools and springs and water voles, hooked burrs and thistle-seeds, the sharp free food of crab and damson and the first mushrooms of a September morning. Best of all, at full moon, to be able to take her from her bed, and carry her down through the warm bright, wood, to the lake, where the heron stands like a spear of silver and the blue pike nibble the reeds…

  Children can often be grubs, even in a pastoral paradise, and I believe that I was one by nature. Relaxed and drowsy, content to sit in corners, I had to be taught to use my eyes.

  My mother, sisters and brothers taught me, though I wasn’t aware of it at the time. But what they showed me then, I never forgot, and I hope my daughter will find it the same.

  Yet for all the milk-fed charms of country life, I want her to see it whole, to acknowledge the occasional savageries as well as the soft green days, the dark as well as the light. Unlike the secretive city, the country is naked, and displays most of the truths about us; but even the worst of these truths, being part of a primitive harmony, are seldom exploited and never morbid. So it is against this background, which neither conceals nor excuses, that I think my child can best balance her life, can look on birth and death in their proper relation – not taking them soiled or second-hand from the Press – and can accept the valley as real, not only in fat-checked summer, but also under the dead necessary face of winter.

  Given this world to be in, where she can grow reasonably wild, she will also expect the comfort of some authority. To load any child with absolute freedom is to force it to inhabit a wasteland, where it must push its will to find the limits allowed it and grow frantic unless it does. Let her have the assurance, then, of a proper authority, and of a not too inflexible routine, within whose restraints she may take occasional refuge – otherwise I hope she’ll be free. I want her to be free from fear to enquire and get answers, free to imagine and tell tall tales, free to be curious and to show enthusiasm, and free at times to invade my silences.

  I hope she’ll sing when she wants to, and be flattered when she needs it, and not get attention according to timetable. May our house not be so tidy that it inhibits her gusto, nor so squalid that she resigns her pride. She shall love God if she wishes, and have a place for saints and angels, or even dress shrines for the more unfashionable spirits. She shall not be condemned to grey flannel, nor kept for ever in jeans, nor treated as sexless or a pretended boy, but be given nice clothes early, and occasions to wear them, and be encouraged to value her mysteries. She will not be suppressed too much, nor yet spoiled I hope, but taught politeness, good manners and charm – not as affected graces but as ordinary gifts
designed to make other people happy. She will not be the first in the family, nor yet the last, but a respected member of it; and when good things occur I’d like her to stay up and share them – and sleep late through the next dull day.

  As for the arts, I hope she’ll want some of these, but not too self-consciously. May she paint herself blue, and the walls and ceilings, but not as part of some art-school posture. And may she dance and spin for the pleasure her young limbs give her, but not with Dame Margot always in mind. She shall have music, too, not wherever she goes, but as an important embellishment of her life. A house without music is like a house without lights, but no light should burn night and day.

  Today’s non-stop music, piped from shuddering plastic boxes, debauches the senses of one of its sacred pleasures. Music should be a voluptuous treat, like a deep hot bath, not a continuous shriek in the plumbing. I’d like my child to have music for consolation, excitement, and occasional exaltation, to think of it as an event and an extravagance of the senses and not just a background for chatter and peanuts. If it’s good, I don’t mind whether it’s jazz or the classics, though I hope she’ll feel free to like both. Best of all, may she succeed in playing some instrument herself which is one of the most intense of musical pleasures. We are all listeners today, passive or otherwise, and for some it can be a genuine enrichment; but to play any instrument, no matter how badly, is worth a thousand hours of listening.

  There remains the question of education, usually a subject for snobs or fanatics (I’ve still time to develop into either). But I would like to give her the sort that matches her curiosity and needs, and not one to make her life a misery.

  I’ll not send her away if I can help it; she’s bound to leave soon enough. I hope she’ll stay at home, inky fingers and all, and be around where I can watch her grow. It is the privilege of the poor – and the very rich – to keep their children at home; I’m neither, but I’m too jealous of my daughter’s childhood to wish to give it away to the pattern-makers. I’ve no mind to pack her off to some boarding-school, to lose sight of her for months at a time, only to get her back, stiff as a hockey post, and sicklied o’er with the pale thought of caste… No, I hope she’ll be content to get her conformity at a day school and to unravel it back home each night.