Dear Magnus,
At this moment you're daydreaming in a baby carrier, glued to mom's breast. You're floating over the Kattegat, which is your father's rolling love triangle binding my cherished Scandinavian countries together. Your departure has kicked off a temporary cease-fire in your parents' house, which looks like a battlefield since the 24th of May.
I have been splattering in your yellow slurry, I've been hiding in the guest room for your waves of crying and the bashing of the washing drum is slowly pushing my eardrums to rupture. I feel like being in the middle of a muddy mosh pit at a metal festival, while I prefer listening to classical music in my reading chair to recharge my batteries. Is fathership a relief? It feels more like being on the highway to insanity,
Is fatherhood enriching? Absolutely. Magnus, you have brought my cynical interpretation of love back to the pure essence: being together. You consider playing hard to get as a childish game for adults. While you see your mother mainly as a dairy cow, the proximity of your father's heartbeat is sufficient to dry up your flood of tears. Merely my presence is fulfilling.
That means that I'm good enough as a father, as a man, as a human being. Nothing delivers more peace of mind than you on my chest. Even when you transform the round collars of my T-shirts into V-necks, which are clearly out of fashion. But after our first three weeks together, I realize that my fashion credibility is now less important than my credibility as a father.
Therefore, I willingly endure your 100 centimeters chest crawl, which immerses us in a cascade of emotions. After a lot of floundering and screaming, you clinge to my chest, dangling above an abysmal gorge of turmoil and discontent. Only when you let go of your aching fingers and surrender to my swing of love, the gap closes and I become your stepping stone. At moments like this everything is right.
Taking the risk of causing a noisy protest, I then whisper to you some lines of The Streets: "Dry your eyes mate. I know you wanna make me see how much this pain hurts. But you've got to walk away, it's over." Curiously enough, it conjures a beautiful smile on your face, and brings you to a deep sleep. Most of the time.
You often combine that smile with squinting your eyes. It is exactly that Chinese pose that gave me a early glimpse of our future happiness, when your father's great sense of humor provoked for the first time a mysterious smile on your mother's face, which she embellished by closing her cat eyes for a split second. The end of my resistance.
Those who can laugh together, live longer together. But buddy, apparently we don't even need humor to be able to laugh together. My heartbeat keeps us connected.
