Becoming The Muse

Parenthood: Uncle Edition

They say children are pure souls, sensitive to energies that adults have long stopped noticing. Babies will cry around bad vibes and smile at the good ones. I don’t claim to be a baby whisperer, but I do know this: babies tend to fall asleep in my arms.

Once, while packed into a public transport minivan, a combi with questionable upholstery, I found myself squeezed next to a mother with a fussy baby who kept tugging at my locs (the baby, not the mother) When I tucked my hair away, she attempted to crawl clean out of her mom’s lap to reach me.

If you can picture holding a bar of soap that’s learnt how to scream, that’s what it was like.

After a few minutes of escalating squirming and what looked dangerously close to a full-scale meltdown, I gently asked the mother if she was okay with me holding her child. I get it, stranger danger and all that. I wouldn’t want a stranger holding my phone let alone a whole baby. But to my surprise, she agreed.

So the baby shuffled into my arms, nestled against my chest, sighed with the weight of a thousand infant troubles… and then said something that sounded suspiciously like “Daddy.”

Excuse me, what?

I side-eyed the mother, trying to see if she was someone I had unknowingly met in a past life or worse, had I just become a deadbeat dad statistic.

Our eyes met.

She looked mortified. And thankfully, unfamiliar. Unless she’d had facial reconstruction surgery like Nicolas Cage in Face/Off, this wasn’t anyone I had Biblical or legal history with.

“Her father has locs too,” she explained quickly, as if reading my mind. “She probably thinks dreadlocks mean daddy.”

Ah. Of course. The universal language of toddler logic.

The baby soon fell asleep. But every time I tried to pass her back, she’d wake and cry. Eventually, I just let her be. She slept the entire ride, snug, trusting, and blissfully unaware of adult complications like mistaken paternity.

When their stop came, I returned her to her mother (a little reluctantly I must admit). As they stepped off the kombi, the baby waved at me and called out:

“Bye, Daddy!”

Aaawe.

I think I’d be a great parent. But it’s easy to say that when you’re the fun uncle who hands the child back just before the sugar crash and tummy ache from all the forbidden sweets you accidentally provided.

And now, apparently, my PA has decided that’s enough computer time for me today.

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