There is a trinity of books that I like and find
associatively memorable. Robert Pirsig’s Zen
and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. Cormac McCarthy’s The Road. And an out-of-print book
entitled Travels with A Son. The
first two are classics in their own right: the pacy epitome of philosophy chic,
Zen,
and the lavishly dark The Road. These
two books have one thing in common, summed up in the title of the third, Travels with A Son. While stylistically workaday, the latter has its own charms - for me, at least. Father and son
travel through West Africa, my native land. I read two of these books even
before I had a son, but there is something at once latent and lateral about the
romance-tinged desire to go on a journey of some sort with my son (the first of
two), maybe a philosophy-flavoured one as in Zen or a touristy ‘grand’ trip as in Travels with A Son. McCarthy’s ‘road’ and apocalyptic counterworld
is a different literary beast - it is fiction, no less fascinating, though, for
its exploration of father/son fellowship.
I travelled with my five-year-old son a few days ago. Oh, but
the 4 am world I took him into was unlike Cormac McCarthy’s understated
chaos in The Road. The London we drove into was a semi-empty world, sparsely peopled by zombie-quiet
early-shifters, mostly smileless immigrant faces. I wanted to go and collect a
car some 300 miles away. I set out in another car, but since no one can drive
two cars at the same time, we switched to a red London bus somewhere along the
line before finally settling in another red Virgin train at Euston.
We arrived in Hartford, collected the car and set out on a
return journey to Kent. Would the five-year-old help relieve the drudgery of almost
a quarter of a day’s journey? Well, perhaps in no better way than he relieved
the train journey outwards. Daddy, where are we going? Why did we leave your
car in London? Do trains speed faster than cars? I am bored. Can we go and see
whether the restaurant is open now? Is the train going fast? I am bored. When
are we going to get there? One minute? Two? How long is one minute? The poor
boy is yet to grasp the speculative economy of time – he always lops time into
simple nano-units. As for the antsiness - how else do you want a boy of five to
orient himself to a suddenly messed-up biorhythm?
He was more settled during the return journey. While I was
not too eager to begin a 4-odd hour drive, my beloved urchin was looking
forward to the stops that I promised him at KFC or some other fast-food joints.
I zapped the car radio from one channel to the other, impatient with everything
I found; I was also looking for something that would interest my son.
Anthemic Coldplay’s Paradise? Beethoven’s
7th on Classic FM? And there was my favourite leftwing rambler on a
talk radio station taking calls about the illegality of human taxidermy in the UK.
I hate the idea of swaddling children up inside a draped cot of moral and
visual pleasantness (a bed of roses, as it were); I’d rather they see the world
for what it is - good and bad, ugly and beautiful. But I would not subject my eternally
‘bored’ son to a long radio discussion of why human cadavers are not stuffed
and mummified for display purposes.
Then I’d run into Michael Jackson’s Man in the Mirror on a retrocast station.
Me: You know who this is?
Son: Michael Jackson.
Me: You like him... His music?
Son: Yep. (A pause) What year was he born?
Me: 1958.
Son: When was he a toddler?
Me: Late 1950s... Early 60s.
Son: When was he a boy, a boy like me?
Me: In the 1960s.
Son: When was he a teenager?
Me: 1970s.
Son: When was he a man?
Me: 1980s, 90s and the noughties.
Son: And when did he die?
Me: 2009.
Son: Why do people die?
Me: People have to die, or else there will be no houses for babies
and toddlers to live. The world will be too full.
Son: Sometimes babies and toddlers die.
Me: Yeah, they do.
Son: Why?
Me: That’s...
Son: It’s not nice to die.
Me: Often, it’s not.
Son: Do people wake up when they die?
Me: No, they don’t.
Son: But Mrs Watson (his teacher) said Jesus woke up when he
died.
Me: Did she?
Son: She said Jesus was woken by his father. Is that true,
Daddy?
Me: What do you think?
Son: I don’t think it’s true. People don’t wake up when they
die.
Me: No, they don’t.
