Ari on the web

If you stand at the right Canberra street corner on a Wednesday or Thursday morning you might just catch me as I make my transition. That’s the transition from Goofy Hands-On Dad to Serious Salaryman that is a regular part of my morning routine as I venture the half-kilometre or so from where I drop off my 11-month-old daughter at childcare to the corporate office where I ply my trade. The day starts pleasantly enough on these days. After the usual morning activities at home, my daughter and I jump on the suburban bus that putters down our street. I carry my daughter on board – no room for a pram on a peak-hour service, anyhow – and position her on my lap so we can both sit comfortably. No doubt to the annoyance of many of our fellow passengers I can’t help but play up each little thing that happens as I whisper in my daughter’s ear. “We’re going around a cornerrrrrr,” I say, swaying sharply to one side far beyond anything justified by centrifugal force. “Look, there’s a man o...

Last Sunday was my birthday. The plan was to spend a fair chunk of it at a picnic in leafy-green Yarralumla, getting some sun on my face as I ate imported cheese, quaffed sparkling white and threw soft toys at my baby daughter in the naïve hope that she might make some motion to catch them. It didn’t quite go to plan (a public yoga presentation and a howling gale put paid to that) but it was still a whole lot better than last year’s birthday. That was spent in the cardio-thoracic ward of The Canberra Hospital, awaiting the results of the biopsy on the huge mass that had been found in my chest. There was a small part of me that feared that last year’s birthday ( documented here ) might in fact be my last one. Or at least my last one in the carefree happy-go-lucky life to which I had become accustomed. But a year on, I remain largely free of care (perhaps sometimes too free of it for my own good), still chugging along much as I was before my cancer struck. The biggest change...

Every time I meet a new baby the sequence is the same. “Oh look,” I say, raising my eyebrows as I gently tickle the infant’s tummy with my index finger, “isn’t this baby…” And then I pause for a second, restraining myself from inserting the usual adjective. “Isn’t this baby bright,” I utter, praising any eye contact the baby can achieve and even just the ability to limit its own dribbling, if that’s what it will take to establish my contention that baby is, indeed, bright. I know I’m kidding myself, but I just can’t make myself offer the usual praise for a baby – isn’t this baby cute? Now that I’m the father to a newborn – 12 weeks old and going strong – I’m as tempted as most other parents to offer up that usual description whenever I’m asked about my daughter. Sometimes I hold back, but often I yield to it. Why do I dislike “cute” so much? To me, “cute” is a celebration of docile conformity. Cute is cherubic cheeks and fluttered eyelashes. Cute is knowing one’s place in the w...

Naming a child is one of the greatest responsibilities a parent has. Short of some dramatic action by its bearer, a person is stuck with a name for life and all the nominative determinist consequences that flow from it. While opening it up to the whims of the democratic process was one option ( Baby McBabyface? ) and engaging the services of a baby name consultant was another, Melanie and I opted to take on the responsibility ourselves. Our criteria? We wanted a name that suited a child as well as the adult she will become. We wanted a name that conveyed both warmth and gravitas. We wanted a name that carried some broader meaning, within our family and beyond it. We wanted a name that was easy to say and easy to spell. And we wanted a name that sounded good, in its entirety and when each part stood on its own. For us, it wasn’t just the given names that needed to be chosen. With Melanie and I each keeping our family names when we got married, our daughter’s family name also ...

As I sit writing this post my soundscape is filled with the contented murmurings of my daughter as she sleeps in the bassinet beside my bed. During a point in each sleep cycle she becomes quite animated, her breathing quick and irregular, her little palms flailing in front of her face and her lips letting out wordless utterances of agony or ecstasy. Such is the way with the dreams of a newborn child, where the realness of the experience manifests itself in the physiology of the dreamer. Just what a newborn dreams about is hard to imagine - perhaps a pleasant dream about the cosiness of the womb or a nightmare about her sudden exit from it. My daughter Amelia entered the world just two weeks ago. Every moment since then has been one of bliss for my wife Melanie and I, even the moments when Amelia's contented murmurings metamorphosise into pained screams from deep in her lungs. As parents of a newborn we can quite happily while away the hours with Amelia, cuddling up and talk...

I have a theory. The amount of gear a person needs in order to get through their day is inversely proportional to their age. A person in their twilight years can while away the hours with a crossword puzzle, a trilby hat and a flat white, all put to good use while perched on a stool. A person in the throes of middle age carries a brief-case, dons a suit and gets around in their car, all of which they deem essential. A teenager is lost without a mobile phone, a bad hair-cut, a student debt and a giant chip on their shoulder. And a toddler goes nowhere without a bag of nappies, several changes of clothes, a hand-knitted blanket and the complete works of Eric Carle, lest it spend a moment bored or soiled. Then you get to newborns. Just days into its life a newborn needs such an enormous collection of things, amounting to many times its own body weight, that just being transported from the maternity ward to home resembles the holiday of a minor member of the royal family. With...

For several years I’ve had ideas about parenting – how to bring up kids so they are thoughtful, creative, caring and well-behaved people. Until now, they’ve been nothing more than theories. But when our child arrives into the world, probably in May, I’ll get to put my theories into practice. As with many things in life, there may well be a big gulf between the things that make sense in the abstract and those that operate well in practice. The daily reality of raising a child – potentially incessant crying, fussy eating and mountain of soiled nappies – will undoubtedly make it much harder to put my ideas into practice. Remaining calm and thoughtful on no sleep and a child with whom you cannot reason is difficult. But regardless, having a strong roadmap to guide the way through child-rearing is a good starting point, even if it’s not always easy to follow the path. Having watched friends and family raise kids, I have nothing but respect for the effort parenting takes and our child...

“So guess what? I’m not the only one in this couple with a mysterious growth inside me!” That’s how I considered telling my parents and parents-in-law that we were expecting a child at the same time I was battling cancer. But that’s not how it happened. Instead I was lying in my hospital bed with my wife Melanie holding my hand. I was still groggy as I recovered from a biopsy and had a great big tube coming out my side to drain my chest. Days earlier a mysterious lump had been found in my upper chest, and while we waited to find out what it was we all feared the worst. It happened to be my birthday and I was happily receiving gifts from the people gathered around the bed. It came time for Melanie to give me a present, and she handed me one that she’d very carefully selected – a book, “So You’re Going to Be a Dad” . I enthusiastically unwrapped it and held it up for my parents and parents-in-law to see. As I began to utter the magical words waves of emotion lashed the s...