‘Cup of tea?’: The 4am offer that meant so much as a new mum

Ten weeks after my son was born, I took him to visit my parents in Canberra. My intention had been to save Mum and Dad another trip down the highway to Melbourne. But being proud, newly minted grandparents, they insisted on driving all the way to me just so they could turn around and accompany us back to their home.

That evening my son woke up crying at two, three and four AM, the loneliest hours of the night. This was what I had struggled with most during those anxious, early weeks of motherhood – waking up in the darkness to feed and feeling like we were the only people left in the world.

“I knew Dad was worried about me. I knew it in the same way I knew he would pick me up from parties I hadn’t told him about as a teenager.”

I don’t like saying the early months of motherhood were unpleasant because it feels awkward and ungracious, as if I am insulting the nine-year-old boy who has since become the centre of my world and the person whose company I enjoy most. But as a little crying lump of a thing at 2½ months old, he wasn’t much fun.

In the depths of a Canberra winter, I cradled my son in my arms. I felt the discomfort of a latch I was yet to grow used to and the sweet relief of the letdown that followed. I watched moonlight cast shadows on the walls of what had once been my teenage bedroom. And I tried not to think of my “before” life, knowing it would only make me cry.

The door creaked open, and Dad’s slippered feet shuffled in. He scrunched up his nose and eyes, rubbing at them as if to urge more alertness into his sleepy brain. Dad was in the dressing gown he wears in my mind’s-eye version of him. It’s how I think of him when he’s not around. It must be at least 20 years old. Either that or he bought 30 identical robes on sale at Lowes.

Making tea is something he can do when things are hard. Something that requires action rather than words of solace, support or sympathy.

“You all right, Mela?” he asked, using a nickname reserved only for family.

“Yeah, I’m fine, Dad. Sorry if I woke you. Go back to bed.”

“No, no,” he said, waving a hand as if to bat away my silly suggestion. “I’m awake now”.

He sits down on the couch beside me. He strokes a finger around his grandson’s head.

“Cup of tea?” he suggests brightly.

Here’s the thing. I don’t drink tea. Never have. Not caffeinated black tea, anyway. I’ll flirt with a green varietal or some fruity thing that tastes like hot cordial to be polite at somebody else’s house. But not here at Mum and Dad’s and certainly not in the middle of the night.

But it doesn’t matter because Dad doesn’t want tea himself, nor does he really want to make me a cup. The tea-making offer is code. Making tea is something he can do when things are hard. Something that requires action rather than words of solace, support or sympathy. Words that escape him, as they do most men of his generation.

The proffered cup (which I’ve declined twice a day, every day we’ve spent together since I was about 17) is so much more than a cup of tea. Wrapped up in the proposed warm drink are all kinds of complex feelings far too difficult to express.

In that moment, I knew Dad was proud of me. I knew that, in the same way I knew it when he sat through dance concerts and rock eisteddfods with a puzzled expression on his face, delighted by this difficult thing he didn’t quite understand. Simply and only because I was doing it, it became special.

In that moment, I knew Dad was worried about me. I knew it in the same way I knew he would pick me up from parties I hadn’t told him about as a teenager. As he quietly dropped each of my friends home too, I would remind him urgently from the back seat of his promise never to be mad until the morning.

In that moment, I knew Dad was happy for me. I knew it in the same way I knew when he walked me down the aisle on my wedding day, grinning from ear to ear and revealing the lucky gap between his front teeth. He’d sat down in the front row, a little relieved but still thrilled to bits on a job well done.

We honour our mothers time and time again, as we rightly should. And we speak about the new fathers of today, who are more involved and evolved than their own. But this Father’s Day I am toasting those incredible dads who parented before it was a verb and who love fiercely and without condition, despite never quite having the words to describe it.

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