Papa

This last week I have been reflecting on the experiences of 'fatherhood'. I've often wondered and tried to get my head around what it means for a man to be a father from an emotional point of view. It sounds crazy but sometimes I struggle to imagine what the point of having children is for a man? In contrast, I have always felt that I can relate to the feelings that a mother might have towards a child. This feeling of a father towards his child has kind of been a bit of a fundamental mystery to me.

Earlier this week I got talking to the parking attendant outside my gym. The shop beside the gym is a fancy motorbike shop and we were watching a shipment of fancy motorbikes being unpacked and put on display. They were white and orange, fast, and had no capacity for carrying passengers. That's incredibly indulgent for a motorbike in Cambodia. He was looking on in disgust trying to get his head around why anyone would buy a motor bike like that when you could get a car for the same amount of money and have far more use for it! I was tempted to tell him about the merits of Frank Snr but instead this lead onto discussion about his deep resentment of the current government and how all of the money was going to the upper echelons of Cambodia while the wages for the lower class were not being raised. He was acutely aware of the fact that while the economy was thriving while he was still on less than $4 per day. He cannot afford to keep his family in town and he supports his wife and 2-year-old in the province. He told me about how when he goes home his baby puts his arms out and says papa... The look on his face, the way his chest puffed out, was really *deep swallow* touching. 

Other daddy encounters this week have been; a father who has been able to adopt when he never thought it might be possible to have a child in his life... His baby holds out his arms and says 'papa'; others of my friends have welcomed a new baby into the family and they dream of him being a super hero (I have no doubt he will be a supper hero by the way Mr and Mrs R); the deep anticipation of the arrival of a new child (damn it, why are all my friends having kids!?); and my own fathers desire to participate in the lives of his daughters.

The way that a father actually feels towards his children is not something that I think I will ever fully comprehend but this week I have been able to get a taste of that emotion that he might feel, and the way that it shapes his being, his work, and his purpose in life. When I put this in the frame of the struggles that exist when the long slog comes, when you are too tired to change a nappy, when the sound of a child pierces the inner chambers of your ear canal, when you search for the answers, and when you explore the process of trial and error that defines life, it all comes into context when that child puts out its hands and says 'papa'.