Daddy Daughter Days

It was a Saturday morning, sometime in the year 2000. My father and I arrived home, having dropped my mother off at work at my uncle's bike shop. Dad sighed, dropped his keys on the table, and looked at me.

“Right,” he said. “Shall we get going?”

I drew the curtains. He switched on the TV. We settled down for what I affectionately called our Daddy Daughter Days: the one day of the week in which we would shut out the world, eat too many sour sweets, and slowly play through the first three Tomb Raider games. I was scared to play them alone. To me, they were dangerous, exciting games, beyond the scope of what I normally played. They had a more muted color palette, and guns, and real, imminent danger, or so it felt.

There was a guy in our town who had a massive collection of second-hand PlayStation games. We bought all three Tomb Raiders, Theme Park World, Worms, and a bunch of other classic games from him for a steal. They were real games, too, not copies, although some of them were in replacement cases. I never questioned how he came to own so many games. I liked to think it was a little side hustle for him, rescuing grubby, scratched PS1 games from families trying to make space, diligently cleaning them and pulling the manuals from the broken boxes into nice new ones, and then selling them to make a small profit. I only ever wondered briefly; being a kid, I didn't linger on the question.

Between him and the second-hand section at GameStation, we had a decent stack of PlayStation games to choose from. We played a lot of them together on those long and quiet Saturdays: there was plenty of Ridge Racer: Type 4, and we helped each other get all the licenses in Gran Turismo 2. I begrudgingly agreed to play Fifa '99 every now and then. But Tomb Raider was the thing we were most excited about.

We made it our mission to slowly conquer these games together, and we played to our strengths. I was the platformer girl: I was really good at making long jumps, shimmying along ledges, carefully lining up Lara to press a switch or pull a lever, and performing swan dives from time to time. Dad, meanwhile, was the combat guy. He would be the one to carefully explore a new area, while I waited, heart in my mouth, to see if anything would jump out at us. He was quite good at the combat, shooting dinosaurs with ease. He swore quite a bit too, which I promised not to report back to Mum. We took it in turns, switching instinctually when we felt the moment was right. Sometimes he'd tell me off for being a wimp, but he'd also tell me to look away when it got really scary.

I found the enemies in Tomb Raider to be absolutely terrifying. It was bad enough to be attacked by wolves, but by the time the T-Rex came out, I was done. An actual dinosaur? That we had to fight? All bets were off, as far as I was concerned. Anything could jump out at us, and I was not prepared to take that risk by carelessly wandering into a new area without Dad performing a safety check first. On the rare occasions an enemy would jump out at me, I'd shriek, pause the game, and lob the controller at Dad, which he did not appreciate. Recently, when I've been playing Control, I'll slowly creep into a new area and that rush of fear will come back — only now I kind of enjoy knowing I'm the one that has to deal with the onslaught. I do think of him when I play it. He wouldn't play a game like Control; it's too fast-paced. He's been meandering around The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim for the last couple of years.

When I saw the Tomb Raider Remastered trilogy, I was tempted to pick it up for the Switch, to curl up on the sofa in the evenings and revisit that happy place. But I haven't. My memories of those games are slowly becoming as blurry and low-poly as the original graphics; I almost don't want to overwrite those memories by playing them again, which I know is silly. My brain has more than fifteen blocks. I could probably hold both things alongside each other. Either way, it makes me smile to look back the easier times when it could just be me and Dad with literally nothing in the world to worry about except extremely polygonal bad guys.

Only in the past couple of years have I learned about the background of Tomb Raider, of just how groundbreaking these games were. “Grand Thieves & Tomb Raiders: How British Video Games Conquered the World” by Magnus Anderson and Rebecca Levene explains that the fact that Lara Croft — a female protagonist — even exists is a bit of a miracle. 

“[The game was] met with incredulity at Core. ‘Are you insane, we don't do girls in video games!’ Heath-Smith [founder and former managing director of Core Design] recalls.” Deliberate choices were made to make her appear tough, aloof, and undeniably British. She's “of the moment” in the same way the Spice Girls were: so indelibly linked with a specific time period that it's hard to remove her from that, even after years of character development through more games spanning several console generations. I think of Lara, and I think of the late '90s. But maybe that's what everyone my age thinks.

Lara appealed to Dad and I both, looking back. For me, it was her aloofness, her fearlessness, her ability to take everything on the chin. She was impossibly brave and strong, unconcerned with the opinions of mere men (and, probably, the opinions of dinosaurs and wild animals too). To play a game starring such a kick-ass woman protagonist was a very exciting prospect. My parents raised me to believe I could do anything I wanted in the world, and I understand now that this wasn't how all girls were raised. Lara represented an extreme version of what they told me: Don't think you can't do something just because you're a girl.

I suspect Dad liked her for different reasons.

What strikes me about Lara in the original games is that she's still very much an avatar. She's quiet, unobtrusive. You know a little bit about her, but she still had a lot of mystique and a kind of stoicism, which I found admirable as a girl who wore her heart on her sleeve and cried about everything. And they were simple games, really. I think that simplicity made them the perfect choice for Dad and I to play together.

Playing video games with kids can be a frustrating experience, as I now know; being a grown-up and having two school-aged kids has made it acutely clear to me. I look back on those days with my dad with a happy glow, but now I know he must have been biting his tongue often as he watched me struggle, as I stubbornly refused his help or guidance. Tomb Raider is obviously not a co-op game, so we took it in turns, but I was clearly Player One. He was the support in his role as Player Two. The extra person, there only to deal with the tricky bits when required. But he also gently guided me through puzzles when I got frustrated, coaxed me through parts of the game I was scared of, and told me to take a break when I got tired. He was, ultimately, teaching me how to manage myself. 

And that's the role of a parent, isn't it? You're their support person until they reach adulthood, when you've hopefully taught them all you can. You've taught them how to face scary situations. How to overcome tough battles. How to persevere and look for solutions. You've taught them all the coping mechanisms you know, because you know that eventually, they'll want to do it without you.

When they were younger, their worlds were very small: just our house, the local park, our friends, the grandparents, the occasional stressful day trip or caravan holiday. Now, their worlds are expanding, especially with my eldest. She's off with her friends most days, playing out after school, or up in her bedroom, writing or singing or playing alone. I'm an integral part of their world, but I'm no longer the center. It's a little bit sad, yes, but it's also an incredible privilege. Even just to sit here alongside them and watch them grow feels like the best thing that's ever happened to me.

And they see my parents every week. I tell them funny stories about Granddad, about how he used to let me have the whole day on the PlayStation, about how sometimes he'd attempt to cook me a pizza for lunch but he would burn it, every time, without fail. Sometimes, Dad and I catch up on how he's getting on with Skyrim or the occasional mobile game he's obsessing over. I'll tell him about what I'm writing about right now. The fact that I write about games is one of the best, most impressive things to him. He and my mum, without fail, order a copy of everything I appear in. They bring them to family events, which is acutely embarrassing, but quite sweet. I can't promise I won't be the same with my kids when they're all grown up.

I've been ruminating on the fact that my kids are quite firmly past their early years. Children have a way of naturally hurtling towards the next stage without fear or sadness; I'm the one with half of my foot still in the way they used to be. I can't keep up with the changes. Every time I look at them, I notice something new: more freckles, a slight shift in the shape of their faces, the darkness of their hair when it used to be blonde. It's exactly the same with their personalities. They're their own people, now. Their internal lives are more private, and there are things I just don't know. I had secrets as a kid too. I'm not sure how well I kept them, but I remember the need to keep part of myself separate. And I want my kids to feel they can do that without having to feel guilty about it.

In what feels like a former life, I used to work in childcare. For a long time it was my job to look after babies and toddlers. I'd spend long days with small children balanced on my hip, come home covered in paint and custard and dirt from the nursery garden. All in training for being a mum; although, of course, the reality of it was way harder than I thought it would be. I had a book of activities I used to dip into when I wanted to set up something special for my key children. One of which was simply podding beans or peas. It was recommended as an activity for quieter children, as something about the slow, methodical act of tearing open the pods and emptying their contents into a bowl was the perfect conduit for a conversation.

This always stuck with me. And when I think about the games we love to play together — Minecraft, Animal Crossing: New Horizons, or Untitled Goose Game, something cooperative we can play at the same time — it makes sense. The methodical digging to find iron and coal and, if we're lucky, the odd diamond. Sneaking objects away from a farmer to have a goose picnic. They'll curl up next to me, lean on my shoulder, put their legs over mine, constantly moving and fidgeting, because kids do that. And we'll play, and slowly, we'll talk. They unburden themselves, sometimes throwing me off guard completely with something they've said: some deep, spiritual question they've been wrestling with for weeks, or an interesting fact about the world that they want to share with me, or a passionately-held opinion on a topic I'd never thought about.

'Mum, you'll never believe what happened at school today.'

Or sometimes, 'Hey, I'm feeling a bit worried about something.'

And when they let me into their lives, I try to remember what my parents said to me. I sit there with a controller in my hand doing the work of motherhood that has the potential to last into their adulthood. They boss me around, direct me, tell me what I need to do to help them, both in the game and out of it. And that's okay, because this is the reward for having to be patient, for having to bite my tongue as I watch them work out problems: these small slivers of time to relearn who they are. I'm their Player Two, just as my dad was with me all those years ago.

He's still relearning who I am, even now.

I think about the things I said to Dad while we played Tomb Raider, things spoken in the slow moments of exploration and treasure hunting, of surveying cliffs to find ledges, of mistiming and retrying difficult jumps. I was in the midst of the tween years, just starting to feel a strange pull towards adulthood alongside a fear of growing up and having to leave these simple moments behind, and my dad had this chance to get to know me, to gain a deeper understanding of preteen Megan when part of him probably still saw me as a curly-haired toddler.

"Did you know that Rachel fell out with Sarah last week?"

"No. Why?"

"Well, it started on Monday, when …"

And I think about the things he said to me.

"I'm so tired today."

"Why?"

"Just a really busy week at work." I imagine him rubbing his eyes. He's always had dark circles under them, always, even when he's not that tired. A genetic thing. "It's boring, Megs, you don't want to know."

"I do!"

The truth is, I can't remember what we talked about. And that means my kids probably won't remember what we talk about now either, when they grow up and look back. But I remember the Tomb Raider sessions with my Dad with immense fondness; those days, alongside all the other ways they nurtured me, made me feel secure, made me feel safe and deeply loved. To this day, no matter how low I get, no matter how hard things feel or how unlovable I might feel in any given moment, I know I am loved. At my preteen stage — which is, let's face it, not the easiest phase of childhood to work with — I was still worth loving and spending time with. I'm still secure in that. I probably don't give enough credit to my parents for purposefully laying that foundation in my life, and I hope I'm doing the same for my kids. I hope that the basic knowledge that they are loved is so woven into every aspect of their lives that they have the luxury of taking it for granted.

At the end of those Daddy-Daughter Days, one of us would inevitably realize the time. 'Shit,' Dad would probably have said. And then we would look at the list of chores Mum left us and run around the house at top speed, hoovering, emptying the bins, and tidying, trying not to think about the long week of work and school ahead of us. How did the whole day disappear like this? Hours seemed to dissolve in mere moments. The slap back to reality was always a harsh one, and I'd immediately start longing to head back into Lara's world again.

Then we'd pick up Mum from work, and I'd give her a huge hug. She would be tired and smelling of bike oil, something that I found weirdly comforting, I guess because I associated it with her.

'Did you have a good day?'

'Yep.'

'Bet you've been on the PlayStation all day,' Mum would say. And she wasn't wrong. But I'm so glad we were.