Hello dear readers!
It’s always so exciting when I get the chance to be published on Sammiches & Psych Meds! Today I’m over there with a list of things I truly could care less about now that my life and priorities have been rearranged by parenthood.
Please head over and give it a look and have a laugh!
All the best,
Developing Dad
I’m sitting in the Grand Ballroom at the Mandarin Oriental Hotel. I’m at an empty table sitting amongst 25 or so other empty tables as the familiar hum of this Dad 2.0 Summit remains strong even on this it’s last day. The conversations I’m not eavesdropping on but I can’t avoid hearing them. They are dads talking to other dads about being dads. The topics run the gamut from the funny foibles we’ve all experienced, to the money challenges to conversations about writing about your family and all the glories and pitfalls that can entail. There are men learning that they aren’t alone in the specific challenges they may face around diseases that have effected their families and challenges that feel slightly more manageable now that they know someone who understands. There’s a LOT of dad humor and no one here that finds it anything but funny. From the hall there’s the din of conversations with sponsors teaching about products and dads learning and building relationships with brands to try to create mutually beneficial relationships.
The formal learning has been exceptional. The challenges facing parents these days may or may not be any greater than they’ve always been. But what’s undeniable is that many of the challenges are new. A simple example is social media. My kids are only 5 and 3 and I’m already scared of all that it can do to hurt them. Of all people I should be able to see it’s benefits as I’ve truly found my voice in that space. But nope, I’m a dad and since the day that my kid was born I’ve adopted a new personality trait, I’m a worrier. So be it.
Yesterday morning the keynote address was given by the novelist, children’s book author, comic book writer and all around raconteur, Brad Meltzer. I’ve strangely become a fan of his work through the podcast tour he did a few months back ahead of his most recent release. He is a genuinely thoughtful person and someone that really seems to get it. He understands that this is all a gift, all of it. His talk was on ‘Legacy’. He spoke about ways in which we will be remembered. His point, at least what I gleaned from it, was that we are how we treat people and how we treat people is how we will be remembered. It’s a message I agree with intuitively, but it’s always helpful when someone puts words to such a thing. One message he emphasized was that it’s critically important that we thank the people that have made a difference in our lives. Well, I have quite a few people that deserve a ton of thanks from me. I’m lucky, blessed, whatever you want to call it, to have had so many people that have made a truly amazing impact on my life who I’ve probably never fully thanked. I’d like to make a tiny dent in that list today. I won’t be listing the biggies, Mom and Dad, siblings and relatives, my amazing wife and my kids. I thank those folks all the time and will continue to. But sitting here it occurs to me that there are particular folks that I Have to thank who’ve played a role in my being here, confident about writing and sharing my life. People who’ve really built me up, had faith in me and pushed me to challenge myself. It’s a small list and there are so many who will be left out, but I have to start somewhere….
Sharon. Sharon was the camp director at Harriman Lodge, the summer camp for adults with disabilities that is amongst my favorite places on earth where I worked happily and ceaselessly for my entire 20’s. Sharon gave me chances and saw something in me that I suspected was there, but never knew. She identified me personally in my first year and told me she thought I had what it took to run a place like Harriman (a dream I haven’t YET realized but at this stage it’s largely been due to circumstance, and the fact that the current director is AMAZING!) Thank you, Sharon. Thank you for giving me true responsibility. Thank you for giving me the space to fail and to learn from it. Thank ou for believing in me.
Briton, et al. Briton is a writer and a dad. When I first started writing about parenthood and my experiences I was pretty happy having my stuff read by friends and complimented from time to time. I was scratching at surfaces and feeling like I was getting somewhere. But Briton decided he had faith in me and thought I could do more, better work and he was right. Eventually, and he may only be learning this now, I started feeling competitive with him. With his work. He’s brilliant and his highs are things I still strive for and am inspired by. Beyond this, he literally built my support network of fellow writers and editors. While the original landing spot for these relationships has fallen apart, the core group of my writing friends who I can rely on for everything still exists and remains strong. You’ll know who these folks are as they will all, in some way, support this piece when it goes public. They are all exceptional writers and you should read them. Thank you, Briton. You are quite the generous scribe and you have been a beacon for me and so many others on the journey.
My friends from home, all my homes. All of you. I see you on Facebook and I am overwhelmed by the constant and unceasing support. Every single time you write an encouraging commment you are adding years to my creative life. I couldn’t be luckier to have the Brockport, Elmira and Camp friends that I’ve had. Thank you all.
I’ve been resistant to being active in the ‘Dad Blogger’ community. I’ve been completely turned around by my experience these last couple of days. To have the opportunity to read some words, to be vulnerable and supported, to laugh and to cry and think, I’m incredibly lucky. Thank you Dad 2.0 Summit.
I’m married to a wonderful woman and I have two happy, healthy boys, one 5 and one 3. I had plenty of time to learn plenty of things about life before diving in to this whole ‘family man’ lifestyle. In fact I’d worked for nearly two decades in the ‘caring’ professions and had managed behavior and cared for children that required more support than mine do. You could argue that I was as prepared for fatherhood as one can be. In addition to all of this I am lucky enough to be the son to two genuinely amazing parents and I grew up in the middle of a gigantic family. Like smack dab in the middle. Life has always included room for everyone at the table for me.
All of this gave me a leg up I suppose. But that leg up made me merely, ‘completely unprepared‘ as opposed to say the dad I would have been at 22 who would have been ‘utterly and completely unprepared and destined to fail.‘ I appreciate the advantage I had. Still there are some things that you learn when you become a dad. Here’s a short list of some of the more important and impactful ways I’ve changed and things I’ve learned.
The learning curve is steep for all parents. Moms have to start sooner and as a result men sometimes make big mistakes early. Have some patience. Good men don’t know anything about being good dad’s until they are given the chance to learn from experience.
I’ve always been hypersensitive. Which isn’t something I’ve always been comfortable acknowledging.
When I was growing up it was a real issue for me. It’s still a thing that can be hard for me. But as I get older, especially after having kids, it’s practically unavoidable. When I was young everything I felt was turned into the only emotions testosterone could amplify. Rage, Joy, Jealousy, Sadness or Frustration.
Having feelings, being filled with emotion was terrible. The loss of control was awful. It felt vulnerable. It felt dangerous and I chose instead to express my feelings, at least the joy, jealousy and sadness ones through stoic denial of them. Which conveniently turned them all to rage and frustration. The two emotions I felt comfortable showing the world. Somehow those two feelings felt invulnerable.
But sadness was there at times. Sadness is still hard. It tends to come out as rage, but I can at least recognize it now. Jealousy is mostly gone. Sometimes I might feel a touch of envy but it’s mostly for made up stuff like money. Sometimes I read something brilliant and wish I’d thought of it, but I don’t know if that’s jealousy.
The world instills in boys the misconception that painful feelings are the opposite of strength. They aren’t. The fact that I couldn’t kill them completely, those vulnerable, painful feelings is because they were important. They were protecting a part of me that couldn’t be fully removed. No matter how hard I might have tried. The part of me that is ultimately my greatest strength.
The only feelings that can own me are those I hide. The ones I keep to myself. The ones that I’m afraid of people seeing.
I would never have believed that I’d ever have been comfortable sharing so much of my concerns and so many of my worries with the world. So many of my shortcomings, failings and feelings. I was invested in them staying hidden. I’d made them shameful by keeping them hidden. I’d made such simple and beautiful things as feelings and need and frailties and worries my undoing by being so afraid of them that I loaded them into my bones and my body and my bags and anything I could carry and then dragged them with me wherever I went. When they inevitably became too heavy and I’d become weary I’d crumble, drop it all in private, curse my weakness and then add that weakness to the pile that I’d once again pick up, pack on and carry around. It was untenable.
I don’t imagine that I would have carried this burden forever. I imagine that some event would eventually have shown me the light and taught me that I needed to unburden myself. Perhaps it wouldn’t have been an event. Perhaps it would have been the slow learning of a lifetime of pain that would have taught me my lessons and prodded me and encouraged me to finally let it go by putting it down, laying it out and sharing my load with anyone who’d care to see and take stock of it with me. I imagine I’d have gotten there some way or other had I not gotten there as I did. But thankfully I didn’t have to wait for either of these things.
What let me know it was okay to be my entire person in front of the entire world was becoming a father. I have two sons who will grow up in a world that is prone to teaching it’s young men that ‘manhood’ means being more powerful than feelings of frailty and weakness. It’s an unfortunate tradition and residual instinct of a time less enlightened than one I hope we get to some day soon. But until we do I need to be the proof that having feelings and being sensitive to them, all of them, rage and compassion and needing and passion and frustration and sadness and guilt and all of them, is a strength. It’s in fact how you grow strong. Having feelings, expressing them, then putting them down is the only way to move on. It’s my duty and my pleasure to show them this, to be the proof of this valuable nugget of earned wisdom.
More so than that even, it’s my pleasure to show them gratitude for teaching me this lesson. For making my life so much more harmonious with the life that has been coursing through me that I could never fully come to grips with and feel comfortable in before meeting them and learning how to be brave and strong because of the love I have for them.
Thank you guys. You opened life to me. You made me strong enough to live it fully and honestly. You’ve made all of it, the joy and pain, pure bliss.
I’m stressed. We’re stressed. It’s mid January and I’m stressing about how we’ll handle things come September.
I have a fairly Idyllic situation. I drive both my sons, Charlie and Teddy, five and three respectively, to and from daycare every day. I’m able to do this because I work where the best daycare we have ever seen happens to be. Every day has challenges, some have really big challenges, but in all it’s a pretty great trade off.
For every time I snap and growl aggressively at one of them for not listening to me about opening the garbage can full of salt for melting the yet non-existent snow or have to carry a kid into the building who isn’t yet ready for the ride to be over, squirming and fighting to run back to the car I get ten chances most dads don’t. Most parents don’t for that matter.
I get to see them throughout the day as I bump into their class heading here or there. I get to poke my head around corners when I know they’re going to be somewhere and watch them making friends and being three or five and breathtaking. I have a relationship with the people that take care of them all day that is just a tad more than it would be if I were to drop them off and leave for the day. Hell, I get to relax my shoulders all day knowing that they are right around the corner and I can see them whenever I want.
Still, I’m stressed. Tense.
It’s time for us to sign Charlie up for Kindergarten next year and we don’t know how we are going to do it. While we live literally across the street from where he’ll be going to school, we both work a half hour from there. On top of that the kindergarten that’s offered is of the half-day variety. Meaning we’d have to come get him by 11:30. So this kid, who’s thought of ‘school’, which is how we refer to the daycare, as something that runs about 8 hours a day every day for several years now has to go to ‘real’ school, where its serious. And where it lasts a couple of hours.
Logistically this causes a good many problems. How are we supposed to get him from there, again a half hour away, back to where I work, which will give him free aftercare, five days a week. I can’t take that much time every day. For Karen it would be twice as much time as she works about a half hour away from me.
We’re investigating everything but nothing seems simple. The local place that could do aftercare costs $900 a month for 2 days a week. There’s another program that is held where we took him for a few months for daycare before I took this job a couple years ago where they might be able to take him and we might be able to remain solvent, emphasis on ‘might’ for that last part. But he cried literally all day every day there. He’s so comfortable in his school now and the thought of that is traumatizing to us. We could and will if we have to, try to pick him up everyday. It will be a very stressful year but of course we could figure it out. The consideration at the top of our list is to move out to where I work. This is for kindergarten. Public school, half day , no wait list or crazy application process kindergarten.
I’m tense without a solution. I’m the ‘don’t worry, we’ll figure it out spouse’ in my marriage and even I’m fretting this one from here, 8 months out. Who knows what we’ll end up choosing and who knows if it’ll work.
Truthfully these are wonderful stresses to have. He’s a lucky kid (at times) for having parents this concerned. The stress is endurable and the solution will be whatever it is we choose. We’ll see how it goes and if we need to change course midstream it wouldn’t be the first time. Woudn’t even be the fiftieth time. We’re actually getting better and better and switching saddles whilst wading in low waters.
I’m not bothered by it, even if I am a bit annoyed from time to time. Because I remember ten years ago. I remember it like it was yesterday. I can tell you what was on TV and what it was I was doing on Tuesday nights at that time. It was a flash. All of it. It was a blink of an eye. Ten years from now I’ll be starting the conversations with him about college. If that’s the direction he goes. If not I’ll be talking to him about a thousand other things and I’ll be looking back on all the time we spent driving back and forth from wherever he may end up in September and back to work with me. I’ll be remembering it with a full heart and so much wistful nostalgia for a time that was the fullest of my life. A time I thought was stressful but was actually the most joy filled days I’ll ever know. None of it lasts forever anywhere else but in my mind and I’m fortunate to have the opportunity to be stocking my memories so generously.
There’s a good many reasons I write. Most of them have evolved since I started Developing Dad. Initially it was motivated by my desire to make this thing for my kids. A record of who their parents were along the way. A place where they could go back and hopefully see how much they were loved. So they could learn from me while some of what I had to teach was still fresh in my mind. This is one of those posts.
My father is not always prone to giving advice. He’s actively involved in helping us chew over a problem, but I think he takes a designers approach to most things having been a designer since far before he even had the degree to prove it. Or the career full of successes. He’s a designer by nature before he was one by training. As such, and as a man that will often speak of how fascinated he is with his children and their perceptions and approaches, he revels in seeing us solve problems. Designers know that there are potentially innumerable ways in which to approach and resolve a problem and he loves seeing how others do it.
‘I’m really very happy that you’ve chosen this life.’ He said to me on the back porch of my brothers house the afternoon before our big day. ‘It’s a good life.’
It’s a thought that’s resonated with me. It got my attention in the moment and has held that attention now for going on 8 years. ‘I’m really happy that you’ve chosen this life.’
It’s not passive, I chose it. I chose to give love. I chose to accept it. I chose to look past fear and doubt and aimed at something beyond the immediate. I chose to commit to it. A thing I’m not sure I understood at the time, but a thing he knew far better than I, was something I’d grow into.
I’d come close before this. A couple of times. In each of those earlier instances I walked away from the afair swimming in remorse over my shortcomings and failures. I wallowed in pity over the weight I didn’t afford the relationships until it was too late. Until I’d messed up. In resolving these emotions, past years of recriminations and loud and repeated listenings to Rick Danko bleating out the lyrics to ‘It Makes No Difference’ or Dave Matthews singing sincerely about something I was trying to feel though I wasn’t, I resolved and learned that I was going to have to accept that she wasn’t the one. It was an important realization for me. To know that in the end while the pain was real when it was real and it was honestly desired when it was feined the reality was that it was the fates and I had to learn everything I could from these painful experiences. In the end it wasn’t meant to be.
Which is a total and utter cop out.
In the end of relationships you divvy up. The reality was, to a greater or lesser degree, or just in different ways for each situation, I was at fault. And the fault that was mine to own was that I wasn’t the one. Not because I wasn’t ‘the one’ per se, but because I didn’t choose to become so. Not until the day after the day before my wedding when my father imparted wisdom he didn’t even know he posessed.
He had made the choice, the committment in his mid twenties. He was on the accelerated plan of becoming a good man and becoming the one for the girl he’d marry. I drifted a bit longer. At least when it came to relationships and my ability to be who I thought I was.
‘The one’ barely existed on my wedding day. It also existed absolutely as much as it could. We were getting married after all. She was absolutely the one for me and I look back on that day often with the greatest of memories as it was the day when we set in motion the series of events that would bring about our unending happiness at becoming ‘the one’ for someone who was taking the same leap for us. The truth is that the love that brought us to that place, through a remarkable set of ups and downs was a precursor to a life we are now well on the way to completing the foundations of now that you are both here with us. But I was no more a pre-determined perfect fit for your mother than she was for me. What I was and am is madly in love with her. Which, yes, means I’m enamored of her. But more importantly it means I’m committed to her and she to me. Through the past seven-plus years of our marriage, through several challenging and seriously imperfect times where we have both failed each other and failed ourselves, we always rebound to that committment and each time we do there is more trust, more love and more reason why we alone, specifically are the only partner that could ever be the one for the other. The ways multiply with each passing milestone of a life spent together figuring out what is meaningful to us and to each other. I’m infinitely more capable of being the one for your mother today as she is for me because of how imperfect life is and because we keep showing up for each other each day no matter how hard a day it might be. We’ll continue to do so through fights and disagreements, through joys and celebrations, through the workaday drudgery that life can sometimes be, through laughs that become the special language we’ll only be able to speak with each other that will give us endless capacity to carry one another when life strikes it’s most painful blows. I could never have been the one for her in the way I am now when we were just starting out.
The concept of ‘the one’ is much maligned by the cynical and those lacking imagination. We all have times when we question it’s rightness and that’s a part of figuring it out, but don’t be fooled, ‘the one’ definitely exists. But like the rest of life it requres two things. First you have to be responsible for being the one and don’t expect life to present to you ‘the one.’ That’s not how it works. All you can control is you and if you want to find the one, go about being the one. That’s the only way to know if you can in fact become the one for another. Second, go about being the one by showing up, every day, for that person you love. Apologize for your wrongs, celebrate the one you love and show up especially when it’s hard to do so. If you don’t you have absolutely no right to expect them to do so for you.
My father is a designer by nature and as such he has gone about accounting for a structure’s integrity from inception. When he told me that he was happy that I chose this life, whether he knew it or not, that’s what he was happiest for. He saw that I loved my bride fully and was happy that I chose this structure which hewed to the design he favored, built and tested in the life that he’d lead and was still leading, both beautiful in conception and structurally sound.
I was never so fool hardy as to think that there was one and only one meant for me. But I did seem to think that there were many ones and I just had to find one of them. I imagined that having that someone who loved me for me would make life easier somehow. And that I would do the same for her. I imagined that this would happen smoothly and easily as I simply had to find a person where this was true and I’d know they were one of ‘the one’s’ for me. I wouldn’t commit until then.
It was a fundamental misunderstanding of what love is, what ‘the one’ means. The one is not the solution. They don’t arrive fit to your life. They don’t come through the door and morph to some ridiculous, uninformed and frankly selfish version of what you think would be perfect. Instead they come through and you fall for them. That’s it. The rest is up to you, up to you both, to make that moment mean something by committing and recommitting everyday. Do that and you’ll find you found the one. The one and only one for you, fitting ever more perfectly together as you grow.
Fear is powerful emotion. It is a motivator and a regulator to our more dangerous instincts and does a good job keeping us out of harms way. Their certainly are fears that need to be stood up to and conquered as well. Those are the fears we keep listed in our head throughout our lifetime. It’s a to do list of sorts and you have an ever dimninishing, but mostly unkowable clock keeping score.
But for those fears that are necessary, those fears that provide insight into what’s safe and unsafe and suggest the best path forward we’ve developed systems to ensure that our children are provided at least a base level of fear for things that should be feared. Our tools are blunt and we can instill too much fear for sure. Perhaps this abundance, this collateral fear is there for a reason. Perhaps it provides a measure of insurance that helps keep as many of us inside the curve as possible, ensuring the greatest number survive the day.
A lot of children’s storytelling, be it in books or movies is of this variety. After a while you realize that we adults are pretty savvy and can see danger in everyday interactions or in subtle signs throughout a story, that we are perhaps to be more attuned and aware as tension driven by our communal standards of common decency are breached. But kids, they need it drawn big and bold. The bad guys look evil and intend to do evil and are open to announcing as much. We tell these stories and we make these stories because they can introduce the concept of ‘people who do bad things’ into the conversation in a stark and scary way. It needs to be blunt at the stage where my kids are at right now, which is pre-school aged, 3 and 4. If it were subtle and Mr. Joker were merely trying to fashion his evil doing by way of insuring that the riff raff, the common folk, perhaps even people of backgrounds more diverse than the predominant ones in the neighborhood aren’t shown these houses for fear of upsetting some invisible social order, it would be completely lost on my kids. As it seems to be on most of that ‘predominant’ class as well. Their villains are in makeup, have evil gadgets and intend to do harm for no other reason than evil. It’s not just in superhero movies either. Children’s literature has been this way forever. Checkout some Brother’s Grimm if you doubt me.
Tonight we watched ‘The Gruffalo’s Child’ on Netflix. It’s not as good as the first in the series, ‘The Gruffalo’ but it continues on the theme. It’s a story of how myths are made in order to protect children by instilling appropriate fears. In each the ‘deep dark wood’ represents the world, and the Gruffalo, and in turn the ‘Big Bad Mouse’, are the representation of danger if not exactly evil. Each story goes about showing how the myth came to be and how the resulting terror was put to effective use by concerned parents effectively instilling fear in their children. The stories worked to both pique their curiosity and put them on guard. They’re brilliant stories that get it right.
The fears that you conquer while growing up come to rest in a place in your brain that you don’t tend to. You know when to be fearful and you know how to behave to avoid most dangers. For those you can’t avoid you either conquer them or they conquer you and you go on with life.
Then you have kids. Then you go about learning anew all that the world has to offer in terms of danger. And you go about the delicate dance of protecting your kids from the information and exposing them to it and trying to make them understand something that defies understanding. Evil doing is just a reality. You accept that it exists at some point, but even then you don’t understand it. You might think you do but then you forget to turn off the news and they hear about murder and at first they call it bad and you say yes it is and you turn the channel. They are FOUR. They don’t need to learn about or start trying to accept murder is a thing we do to each other from time to time tonight. It can wait.
So we keep teaching them about the deep dark wood and we hope that the message seeps in. But on days like today I myself don’t know where the ‘deep dark wood’ ends and the circle of safety that wasn’t breeched when I was a kid begins. Is it at my front door. Anyone can obviously break in and do harm if they were so inclined but the news doesn’t make me register that as a real threat as of yet. Is it school? I always knew it to be a safe place to be scared. Scared of the kids at the other table. Scared of the girls you’d eventually befriend and look forward to seeing at the bar the night before Thanksgiving in your 20’s. Fear of teachers. Fear of punishment. All the fears you don’t enjoy but you want your kid to have. To learn from. What the hell is the deep dark wood now. Is it everywhere.
The day we moved into our new home with a one year old and a newborn in tow classrooms full of 5 and 6 year olds were murdered. I was enraged. I was gutted, devastated and mad. Since then countless examples of this new reality have flooded my brain and I’ve stated clearly why I think guns and our culture around them need to change. I haven’t moved an inch from my perspective nor have the others who sit on the other side. This is not an argument. I believe by now it’s intractable. Nothing I say can make me or anyone else think differenly about our thoughts about what the solution is to this epedemic of mass shootings leaving so many innocent lives in shambles.
For me, the adult with the more nuanced ability to see and react to danger, the experience to know that not all danger looks dangerous, the part that really scares me is what is happening in my reaction. I’m still mad. I’m still devastated for those poor families trying to understand that which can not be thoroughly explained. I’m still just as upset as I’ve ever been. But there’s something else there, something to be truly afraid of. I’m starting to sense an exhaustion with banging my head against the wall. I’m starting to lose hope that a solution can be found. I’m starting to feel a tiny little piece of accepting this as evil and putting the topic away in the space in my brain where I store the remnants and scarring from the battles lost. When I recognize this the fear comes back.
Don’t go out that door, guys. On the other side is the deep dark wood and the Big Bad Mouse will get ya.
I’m a Herb.
A Herb is a standard issue, dime a dozen, khaki wearing guy who tucks in his shirts and is always presentable but never stylish. ‘Nerdy’ has taken on a different connotation since I used the term with any regularity back when I was in college in the mid-nineties, but back then this would have been a part of the definition.
Back then I would have blanched had I heard I’d been called a Herb, but it was always my destiny. I merely had the freedom to wear jeans and t-shirts constantly back then. Were I to have a job, to have had kids, thus making me sincerely value said job, I’d have been a Herb already at that point, I suppose. Such is the arrogance of youth that I presumed my destiny to be endlessly casual.
Now I rely on my uniform. Blue button-down shirts in various though similar shades, khaki’s, black or tan and a belt. A brown belt. I’ve had it for 20 years, worn it most days and spent eras in each of it’s eight varying sizes based on which hole I could cinch to as determined by my ever expanding gut. I am so frequently in this uniform that when I came down in a white button down shirt yesterday (laundry day and I had to break into my formal wear) Teddy looked at me and with 100% sincerity asked, ‘Are you a Doctor?’
‘No, Buddy. Just wearing a white shirt.’ I replied.
‘You wear blue.’ he said. Correcting my obvious mistake.
I am a Herb, it’s true. Any kid would look at me and recognize the standard, basic, middle aged white guy who no longer cares. They’d be right and wrong. I don’t care about many things anymore. If I’m walking down the street and someone is passing and I really need to let one fly, just to relieve the discomfort, I will. I’m okay with whatever tittering it brings. Really. I am.
On the flip side I’ve truly come into my own as a unique individual who is not afraid of who I am. I’m a person capable of remarkable creativity. I’m learning that I have the ability to truly make a difference by being sincere about my vulnerabilities and I’m happy to share them wide and far. It’s scary at first but it’s also freeing. I’ve come to really enjoy my moments of melancholy. I have come to truly like most of the characteristics I possess that I formerly thought of as flaws and I’ve lost a whole ton of hangups I had about my personality that I used to think of as my failings. They aren’t failings they are who I am and now that I acknowledge these aspects of me as just part of who I am they have no ability to hurt me. I’m a snowflake dammit. Even if this snowflakes closet is a string of blue shirts and khaki pants. That doesn’t define me. I’m a free thinker and boring dresser. I’m the proverbial book of infinite interest behind a cover of bland button down blue shirts.
It’s becoming clear to me that it’s going to be my life’s work coming to and maintaining a level of self-acceptance. It’s good. I like doing it. But it was quite a journey, filled with missteps and mistakes all of which got me to this place I’m so fulfilled in. It’s a destination that was arrived at more swiftly, I’m certain, for all the wrong roads I went down. Those roads taught me who I was, who I could be. They were seen as mistakes or bad choices at the time, but they weren’t. They were the classrooms and laboratories where I worked tirelessly in earning my Doctorate in me.
I needed to take all the journeys to get here to the destination I so value. It’s important for me to remember this. It’ll be my job to act as resistance during my kids rebellions and wrong turns. But I hope I am able, when I know they are out of mortal danger, to tolerate the challenges I see them facing and to get out of the way so they can learn all they can learn about how remarkable they truly are.
It’s not impossible to project from here. The boys are only 3 and 4 and already I can see a light in the fog. Nothing crystal clear, nothing close. But it’s reasonable as they approach an age that I can not quite reach back to, but from my furthest memories I can hear faint whispers. They are coming from a me of their age.
Growing up is exciting and fun and challenging and confusing. It’s the stuff of life and it’s great. As parents I can already see how much I’ll marvel as they progress to their ultimate destination of independence from us. I’m embarrassed at how much I often hurt when letting them go and grow even a little, but we must. We want to. Truly we do. But the unbelievable feeling of being so needed, so wanted, so loved and looked up to.. it’s a mighty powerful drug. It really is. One you are encouraged to indulge in fully, to give you the intoxication of pure love that fills your tank at a rate roughly equivalent to the rate that the job requires you to spend your fuel. Its a frantic pace and one that challenges your collective ability to stay standing, keep your balance and continue to progress.
Kids have no idea, at least I didn’t, that my parents were people. I mean I knew they were humans, so they met at least one definition, but they weren’t feeling people, ones constantly balancing their emotions and their thoughts. Endlessly interpreting life and its meanings. They told me they loved me constantly. Still do. I understand what it means now that I’m a dad, but for so much of my life I had no clue all that it entailed.
A parents love is both joyous and sad. It’s remarkably proud and endlessly fascinated. It’s scared. Really scared at times and garden variety worried a lot of the time. It’s fun to love your kids, endless fun. It’s a love that can wake you up and push you past fears, motivate you when the fumes are all you have left and think you can’t go on. It’s also terribly dissembling.
When you arrive on the scene, those first few years, the ones that will hide so far back in time you’ll never retrieve them, never even conceive of them until you are faced with passing this strange and hyper-real time yourself someday, if you’re lucky enough to do so, you become the operating and inciting entity in our lives. For a time we feel we are the sun to your planetary revolutions, but the truth reveals itself over time. You are in fact the sun and you power and light what life we have to give. And we give so much of it to you. So much we can lose sight of each other from time to time.
When you arrive you are all need and as you emerge you pay us in love and hugs and smiles and conversation. At first we talk about the things around us, things we can touch and feel. Things like toys, shapes, colors and love. But as you grow older and need to discover the things that lie behind the horizon of mom and dad you start to push past us. It’s wonderful. It really really is. But we remember we are human when you do it. We aren’t the all giving all knowing force of the universe that your needs have perhaps allowed us to think we were.
But we follow your lead now. Being brave because you are. Pushing past comfort because you are. We try to stay out front. We have to for a time in order to ensure safe passage to the other side. To where you will live in the world. Apart from us but from us. And this becomes our new identity. The path-clearers. The independence enablers. We relish your accomplishments and feel, feel deeply your struggles. But all the time knowing you are safe because we are here walking with you.
Until we aren’t. Not in the way we’ve become accustomed to. Because you need to walk alone. Need to prove to the world and in turn to yourself that you will be able to handle what life throws at you. Because someday you’ll be tasked with being the safety net for yourself. We know this, but it hurts to lose that to. To lose that job that has defined us.
In the happy stories you learn to rely on yourself. To navigate the world and all of its challenges. You build networks of support in a thousand ways and you find comfort in the high wire act of being a person among people trying your best to get through. You even learn that you are so capable that you can give love to others that you see that need it. If you are lucky. You’ve stored all the love that’s been given from your prehistory in those early, never to be recalled days up til now and you realize you are who you are because of you and all those who’ve loved you and you find your way back to us through understanding.
Understanding that we were giants at one time because of you, that the journey we’ve taken, just like yours, was hard and left scarring. You learn to have empathy for the people you thought of as gods who made the moon come out to lightly illuminate your slumber and would keep it there as long as you needed it. Who made life livable and who seemed to stand in your way when you couldn’t understand why they were frightened to let you go.
We weren’t frightened to let you go. Well we were, sure, but it was compounded by the fact that we knew it meant letting the us we became when we met you go to. It was a fear of what we would find in the space you’d leave behind in the middle of our hearts and our homes. You, the purpose of our lives, the ones we so happily surrendered ourselves to the second we met. What will we be without you.
It’s a silly fear I’m sure, but I don’t know how I’ll get past it. I’m sure you’ll be able to see me acting on fear before I recognize it. That’s the job of loving families. We hold on too long and you, benevolently live up to your obligation by walking away. You’ll have to. And you’ll have to forgive us all those times we couldn’t let go when we should have. You’ll come to know that while we walked behind you as you shed those things that children must leave, we were picking up those things we couldn’t let go of to take with us. They are the reminders of our most purposeful, love filled, meaningful times in our lives and we would rather be weighed down with them than let them drift into history. They are the artifacts of the story of our lives and we’ll carry them to the end.
Life is slippery. And fast. It’s hard to catch and if you ever do it’s impossible to hold for any length of time. The only effective tool for capturing life, at least as far as I can tell is gratitude.
Gratitude is often a step too late. It’s hard to notice the things that we should be expressing gratitude for when we are experiencing them. In general, my default feeling is ‘overwhelmed’. It lives with me moment to moment. It consumes me. I can’t seem to shake it. It blocks out so much that I should be grateful for.
Our family is emerging. It needs constant feeding and tending. We are so consumed by it’s care that we can’t manage to get any distance from it in order to simply appreciate it. We are caught up in the mechanics and logistics of the whole thing. At this point, having managed two full time jobs, two full time toddlers (two full time babies before that) and the day to day tasks that all of that entails we are so negligent of gratitude that it’s hard to find at times. Which is awful. Because gratitude is the key to it all. It provides respite from worry and perspective on life. It’s a feeling you are responsible for inciting. Simply expecting the magnitude of our good fortune (health, family, love, work, companionship, food, warmth, a home, etc..) to bring gratitude to us is a recipe for entitlement, gratitude’s opposite, it’s opponent even. My whining entitlement can obfuscate all that I have to be grateful for.
I’m sitting precariously atop the bell curve and if I don’t find a way to appreciate it I run the risk of missing out on all I can see from here. At this point in my life, unlike anytime before and unlike anytime after I am surrounded by all of the people that will make up the world I’ll have known. The new arrivals and those that preceded me. Every primary player in the story of my life is active in it right now. My children, my siblings and my parents are all here, all full of life and vibrantly available to me.
I’ve experienced gratitude in different ways. There is visceral gratitude, the type you feel in the moment. For me it’s often been while hiking. I don’t have the chance to do it all that much, and it was always a vacation activity and not an integrated part of my life. I’m not a person that meditates, but from what I hear about the peace that comes from that practice it’s similar. Perhaps for me walking in the woods is a form of meditating, focusing on a simple task that requires little thought. Who knows. But the feeling is wonderful. It’s a full appreciation for everything, from the air I breath to the wearying muscles of my body to the beauty of the world I’m submerged in. It’s a feeling of peaceful bliss and I hope to pass the love of it on to my kids once they are able to appreciate it.
The other form gratitude has taken for me is the result of a discipline and can be captured anywhere. At a desk. In the car. Lying in bed in the dark. I don’t practice nearly enough. It’s being put aside for worry and stress and fear. All the things I choose to carry instead of putting in the effort that gratitude as a discipline requires of me. It’s not even a lot of effort, but it can feel like way too much when I’ve tricked myself into thinking I can’t let go of those other things that I am carrying that are weighing me down, becoming heavier for all I pile on top. But I know, if I take the time to appreciate all that I have, and don’t just slide by saying things like, ‘I’m very lucky’ or ‘I really shouldn’t complain, I know I have so much’, but rather actually take five minutes to list the specifics of what I have to be grateful for I can access the peace that gratitude can provide. I can be consumed by gratitude. I can be relieved by the perspective it brings.
It’s a commitment I will never regret but one that’s so hard to stick to. I hope to instill a sense of gratitude as a discipline in my kids. But how will I ever do so if I don’t take the time to practice it myself? If I don’t change it soon they will instead inherit the burden I drag around in the place of peace, perspective and true appreciation for this beautiful life that isn’t permanent but is a gift to be treasured.
It’s a little magical this intentional type of disciplined gratitude. It’s a force field of sorts that can protect you and enrich your experience. Intentionally showing gratitude makes the world around you safer, more vibrant and provides you with both calmness and joy. It’s a practice I can’t afford to take for granted any longer.
developing dad 