Holy Jupiter! Darcey’s on Saturn 4

Has anyone been on the Tower of Terror at Dreamworld?

For those of you who haven’t, it’s a rocket ride that shoots straight up - 38 stories - in the blink of an eye. It uses enough power to light up a small town and the capsule you’re travelling in hurtles along at a crazy 160 kph. When you get to the top, you’ve got half a second to push your face back into place before you plummet to earth.

I tried it six years ago and it was the most exhilarating ride in the world – until now.

Now I’m on a ride called Darcey’s Dad, and the Tower of Terror is a bit of a snooze compared to the thrill of watching my daughter break into a trot in the park. And I still shake my head when I think about the amazing speed with which she learned to rip the wrapping off everyone’s presents at Christmas time. Christmas 2003.

It seems ages ago now but I’ll never forget it because that’s when Darcey got her first seven dolls, two tea sets, eight teddies, nine Where’s Spot? books and four helpings of trifle. She slept well that night. She had a belly like a python that had just swallowed a wild boar.

Yes, Darcey’s sleeping a lot better now. Her days of projectile vomit and exploding nappies are all but over. Something has happened to her in the past two months. It’s like God has flicked a switch on her thrusters.

Last week it was her graduation to Saturn 4 at crèche. What a blast! She jumped from Saturn 1 to Saturn 4. That can’t be easy to do, can it?

Then at the weekend she did her first poo in the potty. I’ll never forget the shape of it. It looked like a big V for victory. Come on, don’t deny it. We all remember the shape of their first poo in the potty. It’s burnt into the brain.

I’ll bet that for a few wild seconds there some of you even thought about throwing a champagne party until you realised how insane it would seem to the outside world.

At the very least you made an excited phone call to your folks or your nearest and dearest just let them know about it. You poor, sad individuals.

Alright, we had a few people over but it was hardly a party. Fifteen people is not a party. And my phone call was pretty short because I couldn’t claim a lot of credit for Darcey’s potty performance.

It was all due to her mum. Kate went scouring through the local library for a book on the subject and found Sara’s Potty. If I ever doubted the ability of literature to change lives, I don’t any longer.

After two weeks of reading Sara’s Potty to Darcey, our little girl wanted to be just like her heroine in the book. Now Darcey demands that Sara’s story be read to her while she sits on the potty and at the very page where Sara gets down to business, Darcey purses her lips and lo and behold, life imitates art.

But one thing about our little girl that still leaves me stunned is that Darcey has learnt to flirt. At the ripe old age of 21 months, Darcey has discovered the devastating charm of her cheeky smile and the value of her angelic kisses. When she uses them, I dissolve into 90 kilograms of plasticine to be moulded into just about anything she wants.

Coinciding with my plasticine status is her discovery of the word ‘more’. I have never heard so many ‘mores’ before (except of course when I was courting Kate). MORE bananas, MORE Vegemite toast, MORE bubbles in the bath, MORE Hooley Dooleys. The girl is a tyrant. Then again…

A few weeks ago I was getting her ready for bed. I had given her a bottle and settled our dog, Cooper, by her cot. I had positioned her dolls, Maggie, Barbara and Baby, on the sofa nearby and tucked Teddy under her arm. I had read her her favourite book - not once, but twice - and finally, after much kicking and squirming, she was ready for a good night’s sleep. All that was left was for me to give her a kiss.

In the half second that followed, between my lips leaving her forehead and the gaze that we exchanged, something unexpected happened. ‘More,’ she said.

It was only a softly spoken word, but for me, all the rocket rides in the world could never hope to equal that moment. I had arrived as Darcey’s Dad, and by Jupiter, with a starry sort of swirl in my head, I realised that in her small but extraordinary universe, my kisses were right up there with vegemite toast and the mighty Hooley Dooleys.

by Bruce Atherton
 

This article was first published in Australian Family Magazine, February 2004.