Some time ago, I realized my daughter had become too heavy to carry on my shoulders. I could still do it, but it’s no longer something I’d do trivially. She doesn’t ask for it anymore either, probably sensing it wouldn’t be a good idea.
She still holds my hand, tho, and I try to hold hers when I can, until she grows old enough to think parents suck or something.
Some time later, I was on a walk with my son, who’s two years younger, and I thought: I should carry him on my shoulders now, it might be the last time. So I told him to jump on, and he was surprised cause he’s a big boy now, but I told him it was for me.
And so I remember, somewhat, the last time I carried my son on my shoulders§.
I planned to write about this at some point, but then I never did. But recently, I was watching The Grand Tour, and Jeremy Clarkson mentioned how, if you think about it, there’s always a last time you do something, and usually you go through it with no awareness. It seemed an incredibly profound thought delivered by a random dude in a car comedy show.
Perhaps you know the last day of school, your last university exam, your last night unmarried. You don’t remember the last time you played hide and seek, or the last time you kissed your first love.§
It’s easy to remember when something happens the first time, you know it’s the first! But it’s hard to know when something will stop happening. You have to pay attention to what’s happening and tell yourself: this may be the last time I experience this, dear brain stop being in cruise mode and actually focus.
When I had my first blog§ I remember writing about coincidences, and someone (Nicola, perhaps) telling me: at your age you still believe in coincidences? Now that I’m older I’ve learned it’s much better to believe in the manifest narrative sense of the universe than in chance (or believe your mind primed to notice coincidences).
So a few days after Clarkson’s epiphany, I discovered the concept of ichi-go ichi-e (一期一会). Supposedly§ this means “one life, one meeting” and it points to the fact that every meeting you have is unique and irrepeatable§, and you should cherish it.
I like the idea, and it rhymes with a lot of old-wisdom-sounding modern advice about “being in the moment“. I think it’s probably good advice, but it’s really hard, and probably impractical.
Do I really care about meeting the bus driver for the last time? Should I really treat my team’s daily stand up meeting as if it was the last? How about lunch with my family? And what of dinner out with my wife?
I don’t have an answer, nor multiple answers. But I think it makes sense to try and think: if this was the last time this happened, would I do something differently?
And the other question is: would it matter? I remember when my father died, in a hospital bed, sedated, and I don’t remember the last thing I said to him, nor the last thing he said to me. I remember my mother telling me she hated those situations in movies where someone gives an “I love you” to someone on their last breath, or viceversa. If you haven’t bothered to tell them before, what’s the point of doing it now?
Maybe that’s the point of “as if it’s the last time”: think of what you should have done before, and haven’t done yet. It didn’t matter to my son that I took him on my shoulders a last time, and it didn’t matter much to me either.
But it’s good to remind me of all the other times I took him, my daughter, my brother, friends, and girlfriend on my shoulders. Maybe one day my grandkids, if I’m lucky. When that happens, I’ll update my memories once more, and think I did well to pick them up when I did, and to tell them I love them, and not wait until the last moment.
PS
the title of this post is “on dad’s neck” rather than “on dad’s shoulders“, because of a little poem my kid learned in kindergarden, and I’ll offer a modest adaptation here. The original always uses “on” where I wrote “from” but I think this scans better. Traduttore traditore.
On Dad’s Neck (Shoulders)
(badly translated from “Apu Nyakában” by Gáti István)
From Dad’s neck
You can see the neighbourhood.
No need for binoculars
Nor miracle glasses.
A thousand and one adventures
Promises the distance.
The newspaper vendor is a dwarf
From Dad’s neck.
On Dad’s neck
there’s a pirate tattoo.
A comfortable seat,
Better than the subway.
A hundred meters high
My legs float.
I can be a pilot
On Dad’s neck.
If Dad puts me down
Quite unusual.
The sidewalk becomes huge
Here I stand below myself.
A big dog runs.
I’m no coward.
But still…
Put me on your neck!