Rearing children is the one way to turn us fifty shades of grey

Date Published: 13-Mar-2013

You only have to look at the photos from his inauguration the first time to see just how Barack Obama has aged – and that’s most apparent of all when it comes to the colour of his hair.

It started out with flecks of grey, but the snow is now firmly ensconced on the roof.

The assumption would be that his changing colour is down to the trials and tribulations of being the world’s most powerful man, of dealing with economic catastrophe, war on various fronts and getting re-elected.

But you’d be wrong – because his wife says it’s down to the stresses of fathering their two daughters, Malia, 14 and Sasha, 11.

And suddenly the world can empathise with the planet’s most powerful man – because it’s not running the world that makes you grey….it’s having children.

It starts with not sleeping and works through teething and tantrums.

You discover the art of moving your valuables up a shelf every six months in the way that homes prone to flooding live on the first floor; you find yourself in casualty for all sorts of bumps and bruises to the point that you’re waiting for a social worker to call to the door.

You discover a new Olympic sport called competitive sleep deprivation, a contest between parents who both believe they haven’t had as much as forty winks in the last 24 hours.

Then it’s crèche and school – and head lice and split lips and grazed knees and trying to mind 15 kids belonging to other parents in some ‘adventure centre’ or fast food restaurant when it’s your turn to host a kids’ birthday party.

After that come the peaceful years when you’re lured into a false sense of security because they’ll old enough to communicate with you and not old enough to tell you to feck off; they don’t mind being seen with you, and you don’t have to have eyes in the back of your head to watch them.

But just as life seems to be moving onto an even keel, there dawns the teenage years – and suddenly the world is turned upside down on its axis.

Welcome to hormones; acne; mitching school; drinking Buckfast or Bulmers; sleeping all day, awake all night – the call it the teenage time zone – girls; boys; broken hearts; broken noses….you could go on.

You used to be the one out at two in the morning; now you’re listening for the creak on the stairs to tell you that the next generation have made it home.

Your only involvement with nightclubs is to sit outside them – or around the corner so you don’t embarrass anyone – so that you can collect them in the free family taxi.

So you can understand what the First Lady means when she admits that Barack’s grey hair has nothing to do with a nuclear crisis – it’s the ticking time bomb going off in the corridors of the White House.

The domestic policy he’s most pre-occupied with doesn’t involve Congress at all – he’s his own Director of Homeland Security as well as the most powerful leader in the world.

“There’s nothing like the look on his face when Malia dresses up for a party, and is heading out. You can see his face just drop a little bit,” Michelle Obama told ABC – and any parent out there can empathise with that feeling.

Because while most of us will never know what it’s like to invade Afghanistan or Iraq or to have to deal with a budget that runs to trillions of dollars, we do know what it’s like to have children.

The only saving grace for the President is that he’s only fading to grey – at least he still isn’t pulling his hair out.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune