The one thing that made my dad think I was gay

Tomorrow is Fathers' Day. And today my young son, Leo Drago, is exactly two months old, so I am getting him a playing mat because it is amazing how far we have come these last 60 days (just ask Beryl Itindi, who last month wrote about babies being like 'tech gifts with no manual' after she tried to snatch a thermometer from a doctor to check on her own baby's temperature one day, yet the closest she had been to a medical professional before that day was a witchdoctor from Wanga).

But I digress

Two months ago I came home from watching a game (where Chelsea had lost two/nil to Manchester United) only for my six year old lass Chelsea to tell me: 'Papa, people have gone to the hospital.'

Leaving that brave little lass all alone in the house (it was heading midnight), I dashed to hospital after 'people,' but found it was still one person (and the nanny, who I send back to put Chelsea to sleep).

Then I stayed in the waiting room from Dante's inferno because there was this woman in the labour ward who was letting out shrieks like one being put to death by ISIS, instead of one about to give birth to a new life. I wished I still had my silver Soviet flask (from 2007) which one could sip a stiff drink from.

Anyway, at 3am, a male nurse there relieved me from sentry duty.

I returned home for a snooze, was back by seven am, and Leo Drago blinked his way into the world at 10.27 am (the clock in the delivery room, for some reason, was stuck at 6.50 am/pm, and I couldn't help thinking maybe a devil child had come into the world at that time, here, and the stuck clock was ... stop)!

I personally, triumphantly, like a trophy, bore Leo Drago to his first room on this earth, where he stayed for a day and a half before coming home to a house on black out. Seriously, KPLC, who rations lights at night? Having been 'kept in the dark' for months (pardon the pun), Drago didn't seem to mind.

For the next 12 days, he made sure we couldn't tell the difference between day and night.

No sooner would I be drifting off, then he'd wail, so that I walked about like a zombie in a daze.

On the upside, he is a really cute baby – pretty to the point of often being mistaken for a girl even by the nurse who gave him his vaccinations (a sorry sob story) who said:

'Weka msichana kwa kitanda adungwe sindano' (before seeing obvious evidence, au contrarie). Of course I'm hoping those soft features harden up.

My own late father too had his fears about me (here's a brief aside) when I was like 10.

He had begun to build this house in Maasaini, by himself (with help from our houseboy, Gidraffe, and a random Ngong town drunk called 'Msumeno') and early on in the Ten Year Project, he'd carry me along.

But even in school, I hated woodwork with a passion, and instead of joining the three man male bonding session (that smelled of sawdust, turpentine and Msumeno's various cheap brews), I'd run off to hide in the field of long grass beside the construction site and read the Hardy Boys' storybooks I'd smuggle along for those dreaded weekends (at twelve, I rebelled and refused to go along anymore).

'Thorny?' my old man asked me (in his omogusii accent). 'Do you like girls?' Writing poetry at an early age had my dad wondering if I was gay!

But here we are with little Leo, me taking him for 'laps' in my study (so he can pick up on books early), stopping at my strange wall art for him to stare at, propping hi so we can 'watch' 'The War in October' (Al-Jazeera documentary) together, and me singing him 'One Republic' with lyrics like 'time to make one last appeal, counting up the years for the life I lead' only to find he thinks it a lullaby.

Dad-hood, as the Lord taught us, is about saying 'let me make a son in my own image.'

Yet if Drago someday drags me off to Kajiado, Saturdays, for us to 'work on a retirement home' (because he's an architect/civil engineer, with no interest in history or literature), I'll be sullen! But not surprised.