Good men, we don’t give you enough credit

‘Men are broken things, breaking things,’ poet Joelle Taylor wrote. But no, not all of them.

Happy Father’s Day weekend, everyone

There are moments when the history of your family’s life is stamped in memory, a waypoint of recollection in the span of a household’s existence. This is one of them: the eldest boy on the kitchen floor, flat on his back, almost unconscious with the agony of a dislocated shoulder, a consequence of the accident he had earlier this year. The Chap and I hovering, speechless and helpless, unable to do anything about our son’s trauma.

The primary problem at the time of the accident is now mended thanks to the miracle of modern medicine but a more insidious worry has presented itself over subsequent months: our boy has dislocated his shoulder once again. “Can someone help me?” he’d gasped weakly, and you’d helped him to an armchair and then waited for a very long time for an ambulance as your son curled in the foetal position and turned paler, greyer, quieter. “Don’t cry mum.” But you couldn’t help it. Tried to dampen tears, turned away. From your beautiful man-child, suffering so much.

The ambulance took over an hour but for good reason; it was driven by a dislocation specialist, the only one in the region. He moved our boy onto the floor with the calm, instinctive help of his father. Then the Chap and I watched as the medic gently, ever so tenderly, manouevred our son’s arm back into its socket, all the while soothing and softly joking with him in the most beautiful, moving lesson of distraction and empathy. I’ll never forget that example of tender masculinity in a man entirely unconnected to us. Have thought about it a lot.

What is grace? Generosity. I saw it in that paramedic just doing his job. I see it in the footy coach who looks after my daughter’s soccer team and never raises his voice, taking the good and the bad with an admirable sangfroid. I see it in my child’s school principal tirelessly organising music lessons and instruments for Ukrainian refugee children. And I see it in the Chap, who lives for his family with a quiet and selfless generosity of spirit that twists my heart; to be amid this cloistering of care, when I never expected it as a young woman.

I was raised by a single mum and didn’t quite trust that men could ever be this; that romantic love could be pain-free. Had a pact, in fact, with a girlfriend who also came from a split family; that we’d live, in our thirties, in a collective household with IVF on the go and a gaggle of kids if a good, solid man never entered the equation.

But then the Chap. Who’s happy with a quiet life of service, to those closest to him. The arc of his life has been devotion. To his children. To his family. It’s a constant and it’s beautiful, an anchor and a lesson in generous living. He’s a man devoid of toxic masculinity because he’s confident and settled with who he is and my God, give me the male who’s comfortable in his own skin for that man does not threaten others. Intimidate them. Try to control them. A quiet confidence in who you are – a feeling of being comfortable in your own skin – is freeing for yourself as well as those around you. “Men are broken things, breaking things,” poet Joelle Taylor wrote. But no, not all of them.

And on a harrowing afternoon recently a tender young paramedic showed me the best of men. It is the Chap too, doing his selfless, fatherly thing with generosity and grace. My dad was the same. And on this Father’s Day weekend I tip my hat to all the men living their lives devoted to the people around them, all the men with an astonishing tenderness within them. Because there’s a lot of them out there, and we don’t give them credit enough. Do we talk of good men, enough?