You always start your day by beginning mine; with arms full of the accoutrements of your quirky slumber and a sleepy stagger that barges your tousled hair through our bedroom door, the one with the dent in the wood after I found my temper; you’d locked yourself inside and your Mum had been worried about the medication on the locker.
This mornings entrance was no different, other than as you jumped into the bed, poached a pillow, and then entangled your cold feet beneath my knees, you caught me looking at you with my good eye, and you asked a question that I couldn’t respond to, not because you were too young to understand, but because I wasn’t clever enough to have the answer ready, so I was flippant instead. And it has bothered me all day.

You followed it up with ’What’s the best colour Dad?’ and I told you I thought it was tangerine. You told me not to be silly and you argued for blonde. We checked the weather outside and decided that hospital surgeons would be the best at building snowmen and that the ‘cats eyes’ on roads should be solar heaters too. Then you made me promise I wouldn’t die soon. And I was flippant again.

We left the beds unmade after I saw the time and I yawned to disguise my tears when you looked to the heavens and grassed me up to Mum. We hand-danced in the car to your new favourite song and as we kissed goodbye at the gate you made me repeat my promise. I did. And then I told you not to worry, which was a stupid thing to say.

I thought of you all day as I went about my work, pretending too much or not pretending at all, so I returned to your school too early and became conscious of being a man. So I drove away again. But I didn’t know where to go.

I’m back outside the school gate now, sitting in the car to avoid the head tilt conversations with the well meaning mothers. I’m still pondering your question, the one I couldn’t answer, and I’m wondering what to say to you. I’m trying to conjure up some wisdom to nurture your wonder, fretting about being the Dad I promised I’d be but hearing your Mum remind me I would never know if I was successful, because I would never know what I prevented. So I listen to her voice on my phone and decide to do what Dad’s do best. Ignore the question and wait until you repeat it.

You startle me as you bang on my car window and rest your forehead against the glass.

‘Whatya thinking Dad?’, you ask me again.