Forget looking into your bride’s eyes on your wedding day, you don’t know what love is until you become a parent and hold your baby for the first time, says a patronising twat.
Hugh Donnow, 40, has just become a father for the first time, and out of the blue he had this to say: “You want to know what love is? Have a kid, first time you hold him, you’ll know. I just love holding my little one, it still feels like the first time even now.”
I made the rookie mistake then of asking how old the baby was. He told me to the minute.
“Two months, three days, six hours, and . . . thirty-three minutes,” said Hugh.
I felt my blood run cold as ice as I realised what I’d just let myself in for. “Mankind,” Hugh went on, “is all about continuing the species, procreation. You look in your kid’s eyes, you know you’ve succeeded. That kid is yours. You made him. Your bloodline is secure for another generation.”
I wondered if he was playing head games with me, as he went on about the merits of it.
“I mean,” he continued, “you’re having lots of fun making that nipper, of course. But it’s when you see the finished product that you really know.”
I did wonder how his wife felt about this. Considering he’d been waiting for a girl like her for that long, having her so completely eclipsed by the infant can’t have done their marriage any good. I don’t think I’d be surprised if her heart turned to stone any time soon.
“You just see the world so much more clearly when you become a father,” he added, “and you just know that everyone else has to make the world just right for your child, and anyone who doesn’t have children hasn’t got a clue about anything.”
At this point the dirty white boy soiled his nappy, while the father looked proudly on. The urgent matter of changing him gave me the perfect excuse to leave before my temperature rose too far and I was too hot blooded to keep talking.
So, if you want to know what love is, there’s your answer. Apparently.
