My Diary of Triplet Fatherhood

“Fie. No. Bye-bye.”

Jemima’s telling her story again. For some reason, this event has really stayed with her. Probably, I guess, because, since the weather began to warm, we’ve been pointing out all the newly appeared insects to her and her sisters. Bees, butterflies, ladybirds and flies are suddenly real instead of just being another strange picture they know the word for from a book.

In this case, Jem is recounting the moment, last week, when a fly appeared on the kitchen table at tea time. I guess it must have been the first fly they’d seen up close because all three girls sat right back in their chairs and regarded it with deep suspicion at first. Then, as so often happens with new animals, Evie shouted “boo!” at it and all as well. Still, I tried to do my own part to reassure them.

“Don’t worry, girls. It’s just a fly. It can’t hurt you. Remember the Peter Rabbit song? Even if it landed on your nose it wouldn’t matter. Just flap it away.”

Of course, they all began to flap at it, making the poor creature dart around the table in confusion… until, unable to find any safe tabletop to land on, it opted instead for Jemima’s nose.

She went rigid. She tried so hard to keep still, in fact, that she shook with the effort, her little fists clenched, her eyes crossed as she watched the fly take a rest from being wafted from three directions. Her sisters just looked on in amazement.

And then it was gone to a chorus of “bye-bye”s as Jemima turned to me and explained, in what was going to become a familiar anecdote, what had happened.

“Fie! No! Bye-bye!” she shouted, thoroughly excited by the whole event, which translates as “Fly! Nose! Bye-bye!” or “Father, how remarkable! A fly just alighted on my nose for almost a minute before flying away.”

As I sit on the end of the sofa, I experience one of those rare moments where time seems to slow to a standstill. As is usual at bedtime, all three girls sit on J’s legs, teddy bears balanced on their own laps as they drink cups of “mi” (that’s “milk”) and wait for a go at turning the page of the book.

Tonight, Evie has had the idea of demanding Bearbear be allowed to have a turn. For a short while this means she, as the power behind Bearbear, is getting twice the number of turns her sisters do but, of course, it doesn’t take long for Coco (Scarlett’s bear) to want to a turn and, loathe to miss out, Jem soon chimes in with a demand of her own witha cry of “Raf!”. To those uninitiated into my girls’ fondness for single syllables, this means something like “Excuse me, Mother, but may my stuffed giraffe be allowed to partake in turning the pages of this evening’s excellent tale?”

J holds out the book to Raf but Jemima just looks concerned. Unlike Bearbear and Coco, he has no hands. She holds Raf up to the light and peers carefully at his shoulders as if closer inspection might reveal previously unnoticed appendages hiding there. But then, with a look of inspiration filling her face, she turns him round, lifts his tail and uses it to flick over the page.

“Who knows what this is?” J asked, pointing to the picture of a football on the newly-revealed page.

“Ba’. Free!” Evie shouts, excited. (That’s “three balls”)

“No, there’s only one ball.” J points again. “One.”

“Free!” Evie demands, wriggling off J’s lap and running towards the other room.

“Oh, I see. Yes, there are three balls in the other room. But stay here… it’s story time.”

“Free!” Scarlett replies, twisting to get down.

“Ba’!” Jem agress, following her sisters. And they’re gone.

J and I exchange exasperated smirks.

And then they’re back, clambering up onto J again, holding one ball each as well as their bears and milk.

“Raf?”

I can’t say why this moment struck me so.

Perhaps it’s something to do with the fact that I could see so clearly the thought processes my daughters were undergoing… those early months came back to me, months when I would wonder so much what was going on behind those distant gazes, if they remembered me day to day, what they were seeing when they looked around at a world raw and enormous before their senses. Now, we hardly ever don’t understand them, or, at least, in the case with the three balls, we soon get corrected on our misunderstandings. They communicate their experiences all the time and, once you get to understand their monosyllabic take on language, it’s possible to have drawn-out discussions.

Or maybe it’s how self-possessed they are. No more lying around and waiting for the world to come to them.

Or just how funny and unpredictable they are. They make me laugh every day with their impulsiveness.

All of which is to say, I suppose, that I realised suddenly, how much my daughters are growing up, and how very fast time is passing. It’s only when a moment in jumps out at me that I realise how much things are changing all the time and how there’s just not time to both live each moment and reflect on how wonderful it was. That moment when they’d all run off to find balls gave me just a few seconds to assimilate everything that had happened, to smile and share my happiness with J. Too many things passed unremarked.