Droplets

There was a definite moment; actually just slightly more than a moment; a moment and a half, undeniable, of uncomfortable, inescapable silence. Three men, who had just a moment ago, been speaking as amiably and freely as men can when they are a dozen meetings past strangers. I went back over what I had just said, what was it? It couldn't have been that bad, could it? Nothing said at a normal third birthday party could be bad enough to have this reaction, right? It seemed to have killed the conversation like one would kill a cockroach – a sharp hit followed by three more until there was nothing but gizzards, separated body parts, and the insect still trying to escape. What had it been, that left this death mark upon our social interaction like this?

That's right, I remembered. Standing around, parrying with pleasantries, we had suddenly caught sight of Little Miss Mango sitting at the table in front of us, by herself, happily digging into some party food. Nothing out of the ordinary, she was just sitting there like normal, plugging away at what was in front of her. However, in that moment, I must have had a sudden out-of-body experience. It seems as though I had a flash-forward. You know the ones where you get this sudden, uncanny idea of exactly how everything is going to turn out, what sort of person your child was turning into, and where exactly everyone will be in ten or twenty years time. You don't know how you know it, and the specifics of whatever you're thinking are irrelevant, but you are just overwhelmed by this sudden rush of understanding and find yourself buried under the weight of the future. It's dizzying. And that's just from watching her eat party pies – luckily she wasn't doing something even more mundane, like, I don't know, exhaling or something – I may have seen the end of our universe. Anyway, I had a moment and one which, coming back from, I realised I had just vocalised my every thought along the way, in doing so had exterminated that public practice of appearing normal in front of people and exposed my fellow conversationalist's similar abnormalities in the process. This is a terrible faux pas, especially for a man – we're supposed to talk about football, and how we hate shopping, and bang on about knowing the answer to every problem the country and the world faced, and how we could fix it better. Instead, I had, completely without meaning to, introduced emotion into the conversation. What was I thinking???

I think I was voicing something that had been going through my head lately a fair bit; it wasn't a depressive thought, or one I intended to dwell on, but just a bit of an observation that had come to my attention, sort of ever since my slightly sissy reaction to the cot. It had come from a few weeks of busy work and late nights and seeing my kids a few moments in the morning and barely at all at night, noticing some things that had changed in them and realising that time slips through a person's fingers like water. That whole idea, and the fact that there is very little you can do about it most of the time but watch it go and wonder where it went. That my childhood, seeming to me as though it lasted an eternity while I was going through it, was a blink of someone else's eye, and that the blink that would see the Little Mangos through to fruit would be mine, was a very scary, a very heavy thought. Anyway, as I said, it wasn't something I dwelled on, just something that was going through my mind at the time, especially in this moment where I had suddenly been catapulted into the future, bringing my fellow fathers unwillingly along with me.

What a terrible mess. Usually I find a hint of pleasure in uncomfortable moments because it's kind of fun being a person that treasures silence, next to people who feel uneasy around it. I often try to let those moments go as long as possible – it helps you see people as they really are, without the guards we all put up, as strange and awkward in this situations as everyone else. It's grounding, really. But, that's usually only if I don't cause it. I had brought the conversation to a dead hault myself, one that had been going at an adequate pace, of which I could have later on looked back upon and thought, 'Nice social interaction, there. That all went pretty well.' If one becomes the executioner to the shared manliness, then god help you, especially if it's by introducing our feelings into it – it's like inviting them to high tea. What had happened, where was my censor that usually stopped things like that from getting out? Even though people who work without brain-mouth censors are usually quite funny to watch, especially if you're looking at the person they're talking to, it's a different thing entirely when it's you. How was I to escape that terrible silence I had caused with my manliness in tact? Paintball? Football? I don't think there was a way, so I drank, waited for one of our kids to drag us away, and watched the group slowly dissolve. Wow – nice one there Mr Mango. I thought back, still trying to remember exactly what I had said and how I had brought this terrible shame upon myself.

We had been watching Little Miss Mango, I made my trip to the future minus the glamour of a delorean and come back to a weird stillness that I couldn't explain – I didn't think you could change the fate of the present by going into the future, but apparently it's very easy. But what had I said?

Then I remembered. I had spoken to only the men who had daughters in the group. As we had sat there watching her doing something so banal, I had thought, and obviously spoken something that had scared the hell out of me - that she was going to grow up and be completely different to how she is now, she would stop being my princess in the same way she was now, and that a part of me wished she could just stop right now and be like the way she is right now, forever. Oh dear. The moment, that moment, a definite moment, had been shared between these three men who were suddenly very aware that, at only three, their daughter's would someday be grown up and gone, and that our relationships with them would probably never again be the way it is right now. That had silenced them, they were thinking about it, I saw it in their eyes that were staring off into the distance, considering something that had never really occurred to them before, as mine were widening with realisation of what I had just done. Oh dear. I may as well have just asked them what they thought of death, and whether they thought they had experienced enough in their lives to be happy. What had I been thinking?

'Daddy.' She needed to go to the bathroom, so I happily took that and made a hasty retreat, leaving the other men right where I had put them, considering their futures and thinking about the droplets remaining on their fingertips.