A Good Dad

My mother-in-law is six-foot-two. When she’s sat in my kitchen, balanced on a stool by the breakfast bar, she reminds me of a golf umbrella. Even when she’s folded up, she’s too big to be stored properly, and there is the sense that she might spring open at any moment.

She drinks her coffee while I unstack the dishwasher, baby on my hip. She smiles at the baby’s repeated attempts to launch itself into the cutlery drawer.

“I know you miss your family,” she says, “but you’re lucky with him. He’s a really great dad.”

We both turn to look out of the kitchen window at my husband - her son - who is standing over the toddler, scrolling on his phone. The toddler is eating sand.

He feels our eyes on him and glances up from Reddit or Wordle or the highlights of that morning’s MMA match and waves merrily at us. Utterly unashamed, I marvel.

My mother-in-law isn’t wrong. He is a good dad. But, right now, that feels a bit like observing that he is a good astronaut. Or a good Elvis impersonator. Interesting, maybe even impressive, in another context, but not much use to me at the moment. A good dad is like a good dog. Happy playing with the kids. Gets them outside. Doesn’t mind when they tug on his ears. Unlikely to prepare them a nutritious lunch or remember a vaccination appointment, but you can’t annoyed about that – he’s a dog, after all. I mean, a dad. I imagine ruffling his hair and saying “who’s a good dad? Who’s a good dad? Yes, you are! You are!”

I realise that my mother-in-law is waiting for me to say something. I avoid her gaze, focussing intently on loading the bottles into the steriliser. I see her in my peripheral vision – all crooked elbows and bent knees. She means well, I reason. She so desperately wants to believe that I’m happy here – that I’m relishing every minute of being a mum, that my heart is constantly swelling with gratitude for life’s many blessings. She cannot bear the idea that I’m missing something vital.

Even if I had the words to describe what I’m missing, I couldn’t tell her. If I were to point out, for example, that there’s a lot more to parenting than supervising your child eat sand, then PING! She’d spring open, arms and legs extending, voice rising, stopping me from raining on her parade.