I’m reading Boys Don’t Cry by Malorie Blackman at the moment – about Dante, a young man whose life is turned upside down at 17 when he’s left holding the baby, a nearly year-old daughter called Emma that he didn’t know existed until his ex-girlfriend left her with him and never came back ‘from the shops’. Dante’s life is turned upside down and he only has his father and brother to support him as he declines his university place and takes up the challenge of solo-parenting from a standing start.
Whether or not it’s because I’m reading this I don’t know, but I spent a fair bit of last night thinking about my dad when I should have been asleep but I’d woken up thinking about him and who he was. Dad passed away in 2003 after 73 years on the earth and the 7th March was his birthday.
David ‘Jock’ Bernard grew up in Gorebridge near Dalkeith outside Edinburgh, the son of a mine worker Hugh and his wife, Annie. Hughie’s job was looking for coal seams and he worked damned hard with his crew digging new soil. Dad was an only child and was raised surrounded by the Bernard clan – twin cousins Alec and Alastair and their sister Vona. It was busy, hectic and challenging.
Dad did National Service as a chef in the Air Force after an apprenticeship in pastry but following Service, he joined the police and was stationed in the Thames Valley in and around Buckinghamshire and the Bedfordshire borders, where he met my mum, Jean. As I discovered at the age of 17, my sister Sarah and I were adopted – both from Guernsey but from different families – in 1967 and 1970 respectively but until that point we were raised as their natural children.
As a father, Jock was self-deprecating, humorous, wry and kind. He was relaxed and quick-witted as so many Scots are and he was the balancing optimist to mum’s occasionally melancholic approach to life – which was understandable as the youngest of eight daughters, her twin sister having died of TB at 4 years old.
In the book, Dante’s dad is good humoured, no-nonsense and content in his skills and abilities as a parent and as such, he guides Dante from day to day, and night-to-night as teething and upset disturbs everyone.
The parallels with my own dad are plentiful and maybe that’s why Jock was on my mind? As a teen I had many issues of my own making (no unplanned pregnancies thankfully) but as a rebellious and angry young man my dad had to cope with my moods, my scrapes with the law and my appalling attitude – especially when I found out in an argument with my mum that Sarah and I had been adopted, Instead of gratitude, I met this with victimhood, claiming they’d been lying to us and that it was really ‘unfair’.
Wow, I was awful. So self-centred and entitled. So angry. So lacking in reflection and awareness I, like Dante, thought the world revolved around me and it took a teenage failure of my own (A level results) to realise I needed to change my circle of friends and my geographical location to get some perspective on and some distance from the person I’d become. After leaving for college in North Wales I realised that my parents were doing their best, they were navigating this time period as well as Sarah and I and were trying to hold things together as their marriage was falling apart.
I realised that my dad had taught me a lot – the importance of humour, the ability to stay calm and consider my situation, the importance of taking time to make choices and not rush into things and that it’s ok to show emotions and feelings as well as showing us that there aren’t gender roles in a household – everyone needs to do jobs in the house.
Dad did a lot of laundry, he did a lot of cooking – especially cakes – and he did the majority of the ironing…if I stop and think now I can see him sitting (we had a weird sit-down ironing board) in the kitchen using spray starch to make sure his shirts were perfect for the police and later as a security guard for Dunhill International.
Dad also taught me it was ok to cry. Dad used to cry a lot – when he was proud of us, watching films, seeing his Scottish cousins and watching the Edinburgh Tattoo – just listening to the bagpipes would set him off. This is another thing I’ve inherited as an adult – as a father and as a husband and friend…I cry at football matches, at both my daughters’ graduations (obviously), at films, listening to music and often reading (I recommend Chris Hoy’s ‘All That Matters’ if you want a good bawl!)
I mean, isn’t a man crying the ultimate signifier of masculinity? A man who cries openly is showing the world that he doesn’t care about the strictures of masculinity and what other men think of him. I think a man who cries is showing the world they’re a safe man to be around.
Boys don’t cry? Yes they do, and so we should.
Challenging unhealthy ideas of masculinity, challenging stereotypes and misogyny is what I do in What Makes A Man (and What Makes A (Hu)Man for mixed groups) and you can find out about it here.
I also talk about my experiences as a testicular cancer patient and survivor in Life By The Balls HERE.
