Reflections on Fatherhood

Welcome. Thanks for coming by.

I took the picture in the heading about three years ago. We were spending a week in Ventura, Ca, visiting relatives. We were coming back after a morning’s walk along the beach. I’m walking behind my wife and youngest son. Buddy had collected every little shell and rock and piece of driftwood he could find. You can’t see it, because I’m holding the bucket, but it is overflowing with the ocean’s detritus. Buddy is getting tired from the walk and excitement. In a few minutes he’ll settle on my shoulders for the remainder of the trip. I thought it was an intimate moment so I pulled out my phone and took a picture. I especially like the footprints in the sand. My eldest son was sleeping late so he did not join us. In my heart he has a place on the left. When I look at the image I can see him, footprints and all.

Now a few short years later we have a new visitor. While watching her sleeping I wonder where she fits into the picture. Where would her footprints be? I do not have an answer. Yet.

After ten years of being a father I’m still not sure I understand what it means. Sure I’ve changed more diapers than I can count, and I can count pretty high. I took college algebra twice after all.

I’ve seen all three of my children get vaccines. None of them took it stoically. I can say that none of them screamed as loudly as some of the children in the doctor’s offices on our visits.

I’ve washed lots of clothes that have been spit up on, thrown up on, peed on, spilled on, and even sadly, a couple of times, bled on. My children aren’t nearly as accident prone as I was when young, and still am. It brings a great smile to everyone’s face when I walk into walls, doors, or tables as I routinely do.

I once stabbed myself with a fork while making dinner. My wife thought it was hilarious. The humor was lost on me. I must have had a dozen sets of stitches by the time I was ten (no, no one beat me I simply have two left feet).

There is a certain sense of terror at seeing blood coming from one of your children. That I get hurt all the time does nothing to limit the irrational belief that my children should never ever get hurt.

More mundanely I have seen my son drop a Popsicle on the floor and proceed to bawl as if the earth was ending. You want to comfort children who are so aggrieved. Yet it was mixed with an uncontrollable humor at the hyperbole of the situation. Laughing at your little ones when they are emotionally vulnerable is about as good a decision as vocally noticing your pregnant wife has put on weight (Duh, she’s pregnant, but keep your mouth shut stupid). I’ve done both.

Fatherhood is more than a collection of manly attitudes and stern behaviors that are supposed to mold your children into responsible adults. Though what the other ones are exactly eludes me. There are differences facing me today than those that faced my father when I was little. His father’s world seems totally alien to me.

My phone is an excellent example. Camera phones didn’t exist. I can remember ads for luxury cars that emphasized the perk of a phone in your car. There was even in kid in the class whose dad had a car with a phone. He loved to yap on it when he picked his son up. The world needed to know he had a car phone after all. Then cell phones came along. These things were the size of bricks and looked ridiculous. Yet here we are twenty years later and I can pull my phone out of my pocket and take pictures. It takes better pictures than my first camera.

My father simply could not do this. He would have needed a camera and he would have been conspicuous. No one even knew I took the picture. I had it on my phone for weeks until I showed anyone. It was a special moment reserved solely to me. There are days I regret ever sharing it.

My years of parenting are full of joy and world changing experiences. But there have been moments of mind numbing drudgery. I don’t particularly care for the game Candyland. Yet I have played it hundreds of times with two children and soon I will play it another hundred times with baby. To a little person the game is magical. You literally journey through a land of candy to the candy castle where the fat candy kings eats candy. One orange square. Two blue squares. Ice cream! It makes me want to scream.

So when asked, I play and smile. I do so for the light in my loved ones eyes. They magically escape, for a few minutes, to a world where everything is good and happy. Here, despite all my shortcomings as a father they are happy with me. I feel loved. I feel like I have value. Everything might turn out okay after all. All I have to do is make it to candy castle.

The only thing greater than Candyland the game is Candyland the Real-Life-Day, otherwise known as Halloween. Both my sons went trick-or-treating when they were two. Mommy was there, camera ready. Daddy was dutifully pushing the banana stroller acting as both chauffer (and engine for the stroller) and guardian to keep away the real life bogeymen we hear about on the ten o’clock news after the adventure is over.

But at two they were not really aware, and assertive enough, to experience the holiday. By three children are much more cognizant. They picked their costumes, they butchered pumpkins, and they picked out plastic pumpkins at Wal-Mart to store their loot in.

This is their game come to life. They are wearing costumes, think gingerbread men moving along the game-board. You don’t think they see colored gingerbread men when they play do you? They go from house to house getting treats. Think the special tokens on the board and the excitement at finding that you get the card on your turn.
My youngest son was thrilled to pick the tokens, even if it meant moving backward. Because he got the lollypop, him not me. After a game he would look through the cards and find the ones that hadn’t been drawn. He wanted to know how close he was to having picked one if the game had not ended.

On Halloween they live the magical adventure. You go up to somebody’s door rap on it and they give you candy. Some of the adults are even dressed up themselves. My oldest son, who was three when Halloween rolled around one year, had the best time. He went to the door, timidly and with daddy at his side, got his candy and walked down to the curb.
After every house we had to stop and look in the bag and try to locate the new addition to his ever growing sack of cavities. You could tell by his face whether he thought he had received a good piece of candy, an extra generous amount, or whether the adults had been less that forthcoming. It was a very interesting night.

My second son had a similar experience when he was three. It was exciting and filled with a sense of wonderment. Except, he had a plan. He wanted to fill his sack. We didn’t stop to investigate after each house. He simply kept going. Or I did since I was the chauffeur again. After each door he got back in his stroller and said, “Daddy, next house.” I dutifully obliged. His brother and mother followed at their own pace. After about a half an hour he simply stated, “Done.” “Go home.”

So he and I went back to my father’s house (we go there every year and have dinner before trick-or-treating in his neighborhood. Some of the adults giving my sons candy were the same ones who gave me candy twenty years ago.

Once back we spent the next half hour sorting and organizing his goodies. By the time we were done his mother and brother had shown up. I should have been paying attention because my little buddy was working on his next plan.

At our house after Halloween you can have one piece of candy from your bag after school and one more after dinner. For my oldest son this is plenty since like his mother he is not fond of sweets. My little buddy, however, is like me and has a terrible sweet tooth.

So anyway, my buddy had another plan. One day shortly after, I’m still unsure when exactly, a bunch of candy disappeared from his bag. I didn’t even notice. I’m really not a bad man. We all miss things, once in a while.

I found out by chance three weeks after Halloween when I caught the dog licking a candy wrapper. Thinking she had gotten into the bags I went to investigate. After much perplexed searching I found a cache of empty candy wrappers hidden under the end table next to the TV. Many, ok almost all, of them were empty. There must have been about a dozen. They were all chocolate bars, the small and mini versions so commonly given out including Butterfingers, Snickers, and so on.

What was so bizarre about the whole thing is that on Halloween at my father’s he had sorted the candy into groups one of which was the chocolate bar group. The empty wrappers got tossed on the floor behind the table but there were a couple pieces of candy still uneaten in the bag.

I asked him why he did this. He responded so that he could have some candy. The unsaid statement being that he wanted to be able to have a piece of candy when he wanted it not when Daddy said he could have it. I asked him when and he either wouldn’t or more likely couldn’t tell me due to his limited understanding of the flow of days into weeks. I asked him where I was when he did this and he said I was in the bathroom reading the newspaper.

He’s clever and sneaky. Hopefully his innate traits can be channeled into something good and productive. I hate to think he’s gearing up for a life of fleecing people.

Several years since then I now have three children. The newest addition is a girl. I have hopes and dreams for her. I also have concerns, some are the same for all three, and some obviously apply to just her. But I’m still not sure what any of it means.

I go in to get her when she wakes up from her nap and she gives me the biggest smile. It fills me with a sense of love and of being needed.

Now as I watch my little one grow through the most remarkable development of her life I feel the desire to share my experiences and hear the stories of others. The growth from newborn to toddler over the first three years of life is utterly remarkable. Babies learn to crawl, walk, talk, interact with other children, and interact with adults. By five they are learning to read, count, and think.

Feel free to share you stories in the post. If you have a family blog or site e-mail me a leave a link. I’ll check it out. Good health to you and yours.