I STRUGGLE a bit with expressing my feelings and with showing my emotions. This may be due to the fact that I’m British and I’m male. Certainly, the scenes of jubilation that accompanied France’s world cup victory showed that Frenchmen are unencumbered by reservation.

Like all my other bad points, it’s something I can satisfyingly blame on my parents; I inherited the trait from them; they in their turn inherited it from their parents and so on. Fortunately, my son seems to have shaken off the affliction demonstrating a healthy awareness of what he’s feeling and an enviable ability to express it – something which, if he can hang on to it, will stand him in good stead as he enters adulthood.

So it came as no surprise to me that, confronted with a cacophony of emotions this week, I found myself struggling a bit. To be fair, it was quite an assault as several strands of my usually mundane life reached crisis point together.

It would be unfair to burden you with the complete list of feelings. Besides, having successfully buried a number of them, to resurrect them again for the purposes of public entertainment would be foolhardy. But one feeling that I need to get a grip of, as it has already haunted me several times over the years, is the dissonance between the celebration of seeing my son grow up and the simultaneous lamenting of the passing of his childhood. I first experienced this on his fourth birthday; a feeling of deep sadness that my gorgeous, cute and totally adorable three-year-old had gone, that the four-year old that replaced him would soon be off to primary school, then big school, and in the twinkling of an eye, would leave home forever. The reassurance of friends and other parents of the pleasures that would be in store (even though they later proved to be right) did little to compensate for the loss I felt.

Fast forward a few years to this last week. A leavers assembly, prize giving and final performances of his choir. The feeling of joy for the fabulous time and opportunities of the last few years, the gratitude that my job enabled me to be part of that and see him grow, develop and discover new things about himself. But the sadness that that world is gone forever. My role as companion and confidante will change. I know from the late-night chats to a close friend with two teenage children, that my role will be transformed to one of taxi driver, launderer and banker; lived in near constant anxiety as I watch my teenage son test his limits, learn by making mistakes from which I can’t protect him and knowing that self-discovery is his journey, just as it was mine…

The joy will still be in celebrating his achievements. But the goal of parenthood is ultimately to let go of the thing you love the most.