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But the fact that they can’t speak, they can’t write, they can’t count to a hundred, they can’t ride a bike, they can’t swim, they can’t play the piano, they can’t tie their shoelaces, they can’t eat mussels, they can’t use computers … surely that isn’t because I haven’t brought them up properly, it’s not because of their environment …

Look at them. It’s not my fault if they’re lame and hunchbacked. It’s the fault of just being unlucky.

Maybe “genetics” is the technical term for being unlucky?

My daughter Marie told her school friends she had two handicapped brothers. They wouldn’t believe her. They said it wasn’t true, she was showing off.

There are some mothers who stand over their children’s cots and say, “I don’t want him to grow up, I wish he could stay like this forever.” The mothers of handicapped children are very lucky, they can play dolls for longer.

But one day the doll will weigh seventy pounds and it won’t always be docile.

Fathers take an interest in their children when they’re older, when they’re inquisitive and start asking questions.

I waited in vain for that time. There was only ever one question: “Where we going, Daddy?”

The best gift you can give any child is to provide answers to their curiosity, give them a taste for the wonderful things in life. I never had the opportunity with Mathieu and Thomas.

I’d have really liked being a teacher, helping children learn things without boring them.

I’ve made cartoons for children that my own kids haven’t seen, and written books they haven’t read.

I would have liked them to be proud of me. For them to say “My dad’s better than yours” to their friends.

If children need to feel proud of their fathers, then perhaps, as a form of reassurance, fathers need their children’s admiration.

In the days when there used to be a test card between television programs, Mathieu and Thomas were quite capable of sitting and watching it for hours. Thomas likes television, particularly since the day he saw me on it. He doesn’t even have good eyesight but he managed to make me out in the middle of a group of people on a small screen. He recognized me and cried out, “Daddy!”

After the program he wouldn’t come and eat, he wanted to stay in front of the TV. He kept shouting, “Daddy, Daddy!” He thought I would come back.

Perhaps I’m wrong when I think I don’t mean much to him and he could easily live without me. I find it touching but it makes me feel guilty too. I can’t really see myself living with him, going to the supermarket every day to look at the Snoopies.

Thomas will be fourteen soon. At his age I was taking my first major exams.

I’m looking at Thomas. I really struggle to see myself in him, we’re not alike. Maybe it’s better that way. I can’t say for which of us. Whatever made me want to reproduce myself?

Pride? Was I so pleased with myself I wanted to leave little copies of myself on the planet?

Did I want to leave some trace, so that someone could follow me?

Sometimes I feel I have left a trace, but the sort you leave when you’ve walked over a waxed wooden floor with muddy shoes and someone yells at you.

When I look at Thomas, and when I think of Mathieu, I wonder whether I did the right thing making them.

Have to ask them.

At the end of the day, if you put all their little pleasures end to end—Snoopy, a warm bath, a cat rubbing against them, a ray of sun, a ball, a walk to the supermarket, a stranger’s smile, toy cars, French fries—I hope it makes their time here bearable.

Something has just reminded me of a white dove at the children’s special school, in the workshop where they did art, daubing paint over sheets of paper.

When the white dove flies across the room some of the children clap their hands in wonderment. From time to time it drops a little feather that zigzags its way to the floor, watched by at least one pair of eyes. There’s a sort of peacefulness in the workshop, perhaps because of the dove. Occasionally it comes to land on a table or, better still, on a child’s shoulder. You can’t help thinking of Picasso,