He is good with him

Danny in the yard with the dog for an hour after work, doing a whole voice. There is a voice. It is several registers above his own and he is entirely unembarrassed by it, and the dog is completely besotted and brings him things that are not toys. I watched it from the kitchen window for longer than I meant to and something came loose in my chest and I genuinely could not tell you whether what I felt was warm or frightened. Both arrived at the same time, in the same place, and I have no technique for separating them. I have a technique for everything else. Warm because that is a man who will be good at it. Not in the abstract way people mean when they say someone will be a good dad, but specifically: he is patient past the point where patience is interesting, he does not need to be the centre of anything, and he finds repetition genuinely soothing rather than maddening. Frightened because the same quality that makes him patient makes him slow, and the same quality that makes him steady makes him certain he can absorb things alone. I did not write that second half down the first time. I went back and added it after I had closed the laptop and reopened it.

Because the entry was a lie with the nice half on its own. Not a big lie. A flattering one. And I have started noticing that I do that — I write the version that is kind about him and then have to go back for the rest, and the rest is never cruel, it is just true.