My daughter turned one last week, which is a milestone because she’s relatively unscathed. (Twelve months ago, someone put a defenseless creature in my hands and I honestly thought I’d accidentally break her—forget to support her neck, leave the bleach cupboard unlocked, that kind of thing.) A year in infancy isn’t like a year in adulthood; everything is very first-time-y. I spent 12 months waiting for milestones—the first word, the first unassisted stand, the first birthday—but found myself falling in love with the ordinary days and the ordinary things, including the way she looks around a room to check I’m still there. A year ago my daughter was a brand-new total stranger, now she’s a one-year-old who has no nostalgia and yet somehow creates it everywhere she goes. For the first year of parenting, nothing quite makes sense, and yet there’s some striking clarity within it all. Here are some other things I know, or I’ve noticed, though I’m not sure we can call them facts, per se.
1.
You learn very quickly that your previous definition of “busy” was adorable and quite sweet. There’s always on and then there’s always on…with a baby (a one-year-old can detect the sound of an adult sitting down from several rooms away). Parenthood means repeatedly packing for an all-weather, all-terrain expedition—that’s only to the local park—and forgetting something crucial (sometimes it’s milk, sometimes it’s the baby herself). Your brain isn’t gone, it’s just morphed. I read a brilliant study about a new father’s brain reconfiguration, but I have forgotten all the findings.
2.
The most powerful person in my household cannot say the word “household.” My daughter has the negotiating style of a tech billionaire and none of the vocab or platform; she just gurns and gestures in an about-to-lose-my-shit way that I’m meant to interpret. In order to aid her speech, I spend large portions of my life describing exactly what I’m doing out loud: “Daddy is tying his shoe”; “Daddy is sitting down several rooms away”; “Daddy is trying to remember everything we need at the park.” I monologue more than a Shakespeare play.
3.
The parenting industrial complex would like you to believe a wooden rainbow designed by a Scandinavian cult costs £85. Add on that to a baby, every object is either a toy, or a future toy, or something unimaginably malign that’s about to be toyed with. Tidiness is a distant concept. I had an out-of-body experience watching myself applaud my kid for putting a block inside a box. The floor was a minefield of unexploded Fisher-Price, but one block went inside one box and the world felt lighter.
4.
A birthday party for a one-year-old is a daytime get-together for adults who once enjoyed The Libertines unironically. It’s people once described as “legends” at Glastonbury sipping IPAs in button-ups. That first birthday party is thrown by two exhausted parents for someone who would have preferred some percussion downtime with a wooden spoon and a saucepan. I must say, nothing exposes your true friendships faster than asking people to attend a first birthday party in South London.
