Identity crisis

To say that someone was “looking for themselves” was a common and, in my view, profoundly irritating, statement during my student days. Whenever I was told that this was what someone was doing, I was inclined to answer, “well, they should try the library. I’m sure that’s where I saw them last”. Or possibly the canteen. Or more likely, the pub.

But that was when I was a callow student. These days I’ve realised that finding one’s true identity really is a legitimate challenge. One that sometimes faces serious obstacles. The biggest being becoming a parent. Or, indeed, a pet owner.

There’s little difference between parents and pet owners, as it happens, since kids are just pet substitutes anyway.

The identity crisis occurs when you get converted into the parent – or theoretical owner – of the child or pet.

I say ‘theoretical’ because even with dogs, thinking that you’re in charge is a touching but fantastic illusion. After all, dogs don’t take their ostensible owners out for a pee, do they? When has a dog prepared a nutritious and inspiring meal for a human? And when has a dog ever had to shout at humans to get them to come out from a bush where they’re devouring some mouldy remains of food that would have been bad for them to start with?

And if you think you’re in charge of a cat, I can only reply with a hollow laugh. I’ve been the assistant domestic to a string of cats since 1983. Assistant because the person in charge of delivering the domestic service has always been Danielle. In that role, she has found the means to tell our cats, metaphorically and sometimes literally, to go take a running jump. I, on the other hand, jump to attention when called to duty.

Misty. “I’ll have my bowl now, I think.” 

“Food, sir? Why, of course,” I say, in my role as Misty’s footman, “would you like it in the red bowl or the blue?”

“Time to go out? Please, allow me to open the door for you,” I say, trying desperately to ingratiate myself with the boss, even though there’s a perfectly usable cat flap in said door. And even though the cat has just had the back door opened for him (all Danielle’s cats are male, as all her dogs are female) and has refused to go out, on the basis that it’s raining (or, on one memorable occasion, snowing), but, hope springing eternal in the feline heart, he’s now trying that front door on the basis that the weather might be better there.

The architect of my conversion into “Michael’s Dad”
With my long-suffering wife, his long-patient mother, next to him

in my case, it was kids that got my identity crisis going. For years, indeed, I had a split personality. I was both “Michael’s Dad” and “Nicky’s Dad”. I kid you not: people – little people – would actually address me that way. “Can I have something to drink, Michael’s Dad?” they’d say, or possibly, “Nicky’s Dad?” They may have added ‘please’ at the end of a request, but I have no memory of that.

Looks innocent, right? But he’s the one who turned me into
“Nicky’s Dad” for years on end

This was a time when I had to give up on the idea of a being a human being in my own right, endowed with will and my furrow to plough in life. I mean, take Saturday mornings. These had once been sacred. A blessed time of leisurely lie-ins. They became the time of enforced, unpaid chauffeurdom.

I don’t know whether swimming is supposed to be a sadistic sport. Have you noticed how many coaches start classes at 8:00 on a Saturday morning?

Have you also noticed that if you have two kids swimming, they will always be in classes two hours apart – just too long to be convenient, just too short to allow you to get anything else done. So it’s kid 1 to swimming at 8:00, kid 2 to gym at 8:45, pick up kid 1 at 9:00, drop him off at dance class at 9:30, pick up kid 2 from gym at 9:45, drop him off at swimming at 10:00, pick up kid 1 from dance class at 10:30, can I get him home in time to pick up kid 2 at 11:00? Or can I stand him moaning about being hungry instead?, pick up kid 2 at 11:00 with or without kid 1, get them both home, take the dogs out, and then – time for shopping!

Ah, yes, from being the high point of the week, Saturdays became for several years an excellent introduction to the joys of Purgatory.

As it happens, the identity damage had begun some years earlier. You see, while Danielle is my first wife, I’m her second husband. She embodies the Oscar Wilde principle that “Second marriage is the triumph of hope over experience”. Thanks to that boundless optimism, I had the honour of becoming “David’s Dad” even before I became “Michael’s” or “Nicky’s”.

David who turned David into David’s Dad
Confused? So was I

This was confusing, since I’m David too. Or was when last I looked, in the days when I had my own independent identity. So being referred to by a name that might suggest that I was my own Dad was disconcerting.

And David was also the first to have promoted me to the next level of parenthood. That’s grandparenthood. I’ve had the honour, and pleasure, of being “Aya’s granddad” for fifteen years now. Since we don’t live nearby, this has involved me in little additional work, though it did force me to come to terms with a disturbing change in terminology. That was having to get used to “Daddy” meaning someone other than me. At first, I’d jump to comply when I heard Aya asking, “can I have a chocolate, Daddy?” But then I realised that Aya’s Dad wasn’t the same as David’s Dad. What a relief! I could slump back in my chair and let David deal with the issue.

Aya being taught by her grandmother how to blow eggs

All this stuff came to me the other day when I was walking the dogs – sorry, being walked by the dogs – in our local woods. I came across someone I should have recognised, out with a dog I like, called Alfie. And I was shocked to realise I’d recognised the dog before the ‘owner’.

The same was probably true the other way around. Toffee and Luci are far more easily recognisable than I am. He’d probably worked out not who I was, but who they were.

Toffee and Luci taking me for a walk
and defining yet another identity for me

Again, my identity had been subverted, to be replaced by a personality defined by ‘my’ dogs.

And, of course, today we have Matilda staying with us. As she lives in Madrid, only a few hours drive from here, I suspect we’ll be seeing more of her than I did of Aya.

She’s a joy to spend time with. But it will confirm the impossibility of my developing an independent identity.

Getting my identity redefined as Matilda’s Granddad
or possibly as “Who Is This Weirdo?”

“Matilda’s granddad.” Oh well. There are worse things to be…