How I'm Trying Not to Screw Up Fatherhood

We were in Utah recently hanging out with some old friends from my college improv troupe.  It was Father’s Day and many of us, in the intervening 6 to 8 years since we’d seen each other, had gotten married and become fathers and mothers. It was cool to look around and see so many friends had moved on with their lives in good ways. Life can go lots of ways.  The reunion could have taken place at a methodone clinic.

But I made a joke (it’s a comedy troupe, there’s lots of those) about how many of us will actually be able to call our fathers on Father’s Day.  I made the joke because I knew the particular parental makeup of the group meeting there.  Out of the six male members at this dinner, four had fathers who were dead, one estranged, and only one had a father that was living and involved in his life.  What a freak, right?

I kind of hate Father’s Day.  I always have.  It’s been a complicated road for me and my siblings in the father department and I’m not really going to launch into that here.  We had a great mother and our Heavenly Father picked up a lot of slack where earthly fathers should have been.  My grandfather was a saint and played Dad when he mostly just wanted to be a grandfather. And my Mom’s brother, Uncle John, pitched in, too.  This is not a “Oh, woe is me” post.  It’s an intro to my new job as Dad.

It’s a lie to say I’m treading untrod territory.  I know what a good dad is.  I’ve seen Cliff Huxtable in action.  But it feels strange/disconnected sometimes to do “dad things” for Edie.  I have very little memory of “dad things” to emulate.  Sometimes it feels like I imitate things I think dads do.  It’s like I’m checking off a list.

CHECKLIST OF DAD THINGS THAT DADS MUST DO

Dads swing kids in swings.  Check.

Dads throw kids in the air.  Check.

Dads give shoulder rides.  Check.

Dads play sports with kids.  Gag me.

Dads let kids play in puddles.  Double check.

Dads say “It’s okay” to kids when they fall.  Check.

And I like doing these things.  I like playing cliché Dad and finding real Dad moments through it.  I can’t over analyze everything.  There’s too much life going on.  But sometimes I wonder what my gauge is.  Like my improv friends who had fathers that died, it’s a strange thing to realize you only have your shadow to measure against.  Or I guess the idea of a shadow is all you have.

I remember looking in the mirror the first time I was going to shave and realizing I was terrified.  I could cut my face into hamburger.  Why was there no one to teach me? Who let me have this tiny knife? Why was I being trusted with this responsibility? Maybe my teenage rat mustache could be burned off?  Ultimately, I came through mostly unnicked.

As much I say I don’t care, I do wonder if I’m just suppressing a desire to look over my shoulder and have someone say, “That’s right, son. You’re doing it right.”  Parenthood is a strange solitary journey even when you have someone next to you co-piloting.  Then I guess life is a strangely solitary thing as well.  Your dreams are your own.  The echo of your thoughts inside your brain is yours alone.  It’s good kids have such crappy memories or they’d remember you messing up a lot.

The thing is, I want Edie to be in that room 30 years from now hanging out with her friends and when hands are raised for who still has their dad around, I want hers to be the one raised.  I know life is tricky and full of lots of sudden and tragic things.  But I like being her dad.  I’m crazy about it actually.  I’m going to try to stick around.

I was carrying her down the road last night in the 94 degree Boston humidity with her little body like a heater against me and my shirt clinging to me because of it and we both looked up at the hawk flying over us and she pointed at it and I said, “Hawk” and she paused and said “Haw-awk!” and she clapped for herself and I didn’t need anyone to tell me I was doing it right. I knew I was.

Though one nod from Dr. Huxtable would be alright.

Edie and Pop - Ep. 15 - Baby Prisoner

The continuing saga of text messages between me and my baby.

EDIE:  Hey, have you noticed something weird about Mom?

POP:  Does she have another man? What do you know? I knew I was never good enough for her. Let’s kill him. 

EDIE:  No, I was just saying she was gone.  That’s weird, right?  Like where is she?

POP:  Oh, she’s gone for the weekend.  I’m watching you.  No big deal.

EDIE:  How long is a weekend? I don’t understand time and space! Do you know nothing about babies?

POP:  I really don’t. I hated hanging around babies before you.  I hated pictures of them even more.

EDIE:  You’re a monster.

POP:  And yet you stick around.

EDIE:  I can’t open doors, dummy.  I’m a prisoner.  A prisoner with a nice Mommy Warden and an evil Pop Guard.

POP:  Are you still mad I took away that bottle of aspirin?

EDIE:  It made a wonderful rattley noise!  Why do you poop on my happiness?

POP:  That’s disgusting and I’m protecting you. 

EDIE:  You’re stifling me.  I demand you unchildproof this house.

POP:  I demand you never like Dora!

EDIE:  I don’t even know who that is because you keep me locked in a tower!

POP:  It’s called a house and she’s a little annoying girl with a football head that keeps company with a filthy monkey and is always trying to push Spanish on me!  You can never like her!

EDIE:  I’ll like her just to spite you!  Now show me Mom!

POP:  I can’t. She’s gone.

EDIE:  She left me?! Forever? Waaaaaaaaaaaah!

POP:  Why are you spelling out your crying?  Why aren’t you just crying?

EDIE:  I express myself better electronically.  I pour my emotions into my thumbs.

POP:  I’m taking away that phone.  You’re too attached to it.

EDIE:  Then how will I call Mom?

POP:  You’ve never actually called Mom.  You’re talking to Siri.  She’s a robot.

EDIE:  Whew.  I thought Mom had a ‘phone voice’.  I was worried she would need a weirdo intervention.

POP:  She’ll be back tomorrow.  Go to sleep.

EDIE:  I don’t feel safe. Hold me.

POP:  I’m sorry, baby. Of course I’ll hold you. I’m coming.

~ 2 Minutes Later ~

POP:  You threw a Glow Worm at me!

EDIE:  Siri told me to do it!  She said it would knock you unconscious and then we could use your body as a ladder to escape the crib.

POP:  You’re in big trouble. You’re getting no treats tomorrow!

EDIE:  You’ll cave!  You’re weak!  You’re no Mom!  I’ll be shoving my face full of craisins by sun up!

POP:  I’m going to get you a new Mom.  A mean one that never wants to snuggle you.

EDIE:  Good luck.  Mom already told me she’s getting me a new Dad.

POP:  I knew it!  It’s not just paranoia.  What is it? Am I overweight?  Do I talk about nerd movies too much?  Is it how much I like poetry?  Do I need to become a lumberjack?

EDIE:  Goodnight, Former Dad.  I’m sleepy.

POP:  Answer me!

EDIE:  Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

POP:  You typed a bunch of Z’s.  You’re not actually asleep.

My Mother In Vermont

If you’re reading this, you may or may not know my Mom.  That’s okay.  I’m going to tell you about her.

When my Mom was a junior, she went to Vermont.  I’ve forgotten details about it.  I know that she’d become a Mormon by then and that she was staying with a Mormon family.  It was far from the industrialized rust of Michigan.   Away from the complications of parents and brothers.  She was gone for almost a year.  An eon in teenage life.

It’s not even the story.  It’s the way my Mom tells it.  The excited quality of her voice.  I’ve tried to write a poem about it multiple times.  Here’s examples of lines from the poem:

It’s okay to say Vermont like that,

like a prayer-word, like a rainstorm—

And this later:

It seems odd to want my own undoing,

but many times I wished you in Vermont.

Because I wonder what life would have been like for my Mom if she hadn’t left there.  If she’d stayed.  A lot of her story, of the man who helped to create me and Candace, how young she was, and how it spun her away, is her own.  Only she can tell you of those later years.  I can't retell her story.  I can only tell you a story I imagine.

She told me how in Vermont the neighboring asylum wasn’t great with security and how the full moon drove the patients crazier.  She’d find them wandering on the lawns.  The father of her host family was a doctor there.  I imagine my mother, long haired and wild-eyed, racing out in the night, leading these nomads of the mind back to their rooms. Barefoot in the dew settling on Vermont.

To me, my Mom in Vermont is forever barefoot.

I’m sure she’ll tell you that we, her kids, are her greatest joy.  And I’m sure we are.  And like all experiences, it’s hard to say if we would trade that experience for who we are now.  The amalgamation of ourselves is a hard thing to argue against. The Lord has granted my Mom a lot of strength and foresight because of her life.  You can’t dissect that out from her.

In Vermont, she lived in a mansion.  She was the New Girl.  She was alone and full of destiny.  She could recreate herself.  She could be any version of her she wanted.  When I picture her, I don’t want her to meet my Dad.  I want her to stay. Visit her family in the summers and roadtrip far to the North.  Go to Prince Edward Island. Look out over the ocean. Know that she could swim it if she wanted to.

I’m an adult now.  I’m well adjusted despite the rollercoasters of childhood.  Our Mom pulled us through all that.  I don’t think she had a bad life or wasted it.  That’s not what I’m saying.

I’m saying that as an adult I want the most happiness for her.  As a child you only want happiness for yourself.  Now I wish I could go back and give her Vermont.  Give her the place that puts the most light in her voice.  Even if it derailed my life.  Even if I never happened.  I would want my Mom to have any existence she dreamed. Vermont ever after.