The following is not to diminish anyone else’s contributions, such as mothers, but it is simply something that I wrote in my head today and had to put it down. I would also like to dedicate it to Jeff Moon and all the fathers who were not given the privileges and pains of raising teenagers and who had to leave their children way too soon!
Fatherhood
And so it begins! That day when you are standing outside the door as your wife pees on a stick and then screams and you nearly pass out! The idea of becoming a father brings so much joy and sheer terror, it is impossible to fully describe! From that moment on, your life isn’t about you, it is about that little life growing inside the woman you love! Except you are like the child standing in front of a store looking through the window at the great toys inside! You will always be just slightly outside the role of a mother! While that child is part of you at the beginning, your role is now secondary, and it many ways it will always be treated as secondary. So, how does it feel to be a father? I realize these are not the experiences of all fathers, but just a list of the potential things that being a father may entail.
1. As a newly expecting father, you get to watch the woman you love being poked, prodded, bled, and in general ravaged by this amazing little life inside her and the doctors! You get to hold her hair as she loses many good meals while bowed over the toilet! You get to stand by and feel totally helpless while your wife suffers! Fathers are problem solvers, but this time you cannot solve the problem! You can rush out in the middle of the night to find any food this amazing woman happens to crave! That still doesn’t solve the problem, because by the time you get back, the craving is either gone or she wants something different! Through nine months, you get to sit and watch and wait!
2. Then, the big day arrives! You get to see the woman you love in more pain as you rush her to the hospital! In today’s modern world, you have the honor of being in the room in very close quarters with the woman you love as she screams the many ways she would like to kill you! As you watch for hours and hours, your love goes through terrible torture and you cannot take an ounce of that pain away like you want to! Even with all the modern drugs, it is a grueling process, and of course you will never know what it feels like to bring a life into the world! (Thank GOD!) Now, as you watch, the woman you love is nearly split in half and you will never look at certain parts exactly the same way again! If you haven’t witnessed the beauty of birth, go into a delivery room right after! Might make you rethink fatherhood if you had a choice at this point! After my children were born, there was blood on the wall, floor and everything else! The doctor was good enough to wear white shoes, which were now red! But when that first whale comes out of that tiny creature, tears stream down your face and you REALLY understand the beauty of birth! (I recommend not commenting on this as the woman you love is still finishing her job and may not be in the best of moods for your long diatribe on how beautiful the experience was! Don’t ask, “Was it good for you?” if you want to live to raise that sweet baby!)
3. You have survived childbirth, as long as you didn’t say anything stupid to your wife while she was giving birth! Now what? There is no feeling like the first time you hold that amazing creature! The woman has been connected to that baby for 9 months while you felt like you were on the outside, but now you can hold this baby! And you are terrified! So small, helpless, you realize that your life will never be the same! You would die right then and there if it meant you could save your child from any pain! You start planning the baby’s future sports career, genius academic career, and every other aspect of life! You realize you had better go out and buy a shotgun! If it’s a boy, you will need to teach him to shoot and if it is a girl, you will need that shotgun for her dating days! (I don’t mean to be sexist here! I will teach my daughter to shoot too, as long as she remembers to aim it at that teenage boy trying to date her!)
4. The Early Years-In our society, mothers are often almost canonized, while fathers are often seen as an unnecessary extra. If a father is there it is all the better, but the child could never survive without the mother! Now, I know that there are many fathers that walk away and do not take the role of father seriously, but I think there are many, many more who see this as the most awesome and important thing they will ever do! They would do anything for that child! We change diapers, clean up after all the messy stages of development, get up at all hours of the night etc., but usually the media either ignores that or makes fun of the fact that they think we change one diaper and then exaggerate! I for one changed hundreds of diapers and was involved in every aspect of my children’s lives during these early years, as I am sure many other fathers are!
5. These years also bring one of the most amazing feelings a father can ever have…You become a super hero!! Every bump, scape and bruise can be solved with a hug and a kiss! You have the power to instantly make that child feel safe! They look you in the eyes and think you can do anything and you could never do any wrong! Every time you hear them call out the word “Daddy”, you could leap tall buildings, you could run to their aid faster than a speeding bullet, and you can fix any problem they could ever imagine having! In these years, being Superdad in their eyes is a feeling like no other!
6. The Middle Years-Fatherhood has new meaning as your children enters what I call the middle years from about 8 until about 12! In these years, your kids start to need you less! They will often go to mom for major issues and you are called in as reserve to dole out punishments and to be the bad cop when they get in trouble! However, in these years, you are still Superdad when they are in need! They still think you can solve any problem, including getting all of their Christmas toys out of those packages (Buy a chainsaw for this!) from the devil, always having a supply of batteries, being able to set up any electronic device…well you get the idea! They call you when in need, then they go about their own business! These years begin the bittersweet phase of fatherhood! You revel in all the moments where they succeed, you pick them up when they fail, but the ultimate realization is that they are growing up! Every time you go more than a few hours without seeing them, they seem to change and grow 10 times over! While you love seeing them grow, you just want it to slow down or stop for a while so you can hang onto to all those joys of childhood! But you can’t! They will grow and change no matter what you do!
7. The EVIL Years-Yes they will happen, though they vary widely in intensity and duration! Somewhere around 13, your sweet, innocent, beautiful child will become possessed by a teenager! These years are needed for that child to become an adult, but as a father your job is to keep them alive and on the best path possible while trying to let them learn to take care of themselves! (Remember that shotgun you bought when they were born! Get it out, clean it and buy extra ammo!) If you have a son, at some time he is going to be like those raging elk on Wild Kingdom that slammed their heads together until they passed out! You, as a rational adult, know they still need you and still love you, but they will rarely say it and more often will fight you even if you agree with what they choose to do! If you have a daughter, they will bat those beautiful eyes, and say “Daddy, I love you so much! I really need that new car, $1000 prom dress etc.!” And you will think, awe, she is so sweet! Don’t fall for it! That evil teenager is lurking behind those eyes! As the adult you have to realize that and do what you know is best for the child even if they huff and storm off and utter the most dreaded words a father can hear…”I hate you! You are ruining my life!” They are going to say it and your heart will break, but they do not mean it! It is that evil teenager!
8. Letting Go-When the demon teenager leaves them at some point, that child you remember is gone! Standing before you is a full blown adult that you helped bring into the world and raise! When you look at them, you still see the child and actually mourn the loss on occasion, but you also stand in awe of how far they have come! You watch them learn to drive (That horror story could be another whole segment in this saga!), you watch them get jobs, graduate from high school, college, etc., get married and then you start the next stage of fatherhood, being the crazy grandfather! All the while, you look back and realize how much you miss all of those early moments! You cherish the good and the bad moments and try to lock those memories in forever! Finally, you have to let them go to live their own lives! This is the hardest time of all! No matter how much you want to hold on to them, you know if you try it will not be what is best for them!
As you watch them reach new heights in life, every time they succeed and they are celebrating, the camera will focus on them and with tears in their eyes, they will say “Thanks MOM! I love you! I couldn’t have done this without you!” Yes, most of the time they will not acknowledge how important you are in their life! Mom will get that position, but you will know in your heart the most import job you ever had was being a father! Who needs the credit, when you get all of those moments as reward!
As I write this from the position of a step-father now (Again, another whole story unto itself!), I have held my young children as they mourn the sudden death of their father, Jeff Moon, to whom I dedicate this story! Because so many fathers miss all of these joys either because of their own flaws or because of things totally beyond their control, like Jeff’s passing, I wanted to remind fathers how important they truly are! I think Jeff knew how lucky he was to be a father and he was an amazing one! The fact that he will miss all of those joys and even those evil teenage years is the saddest thing of all to me! However, I can hear in in my mind’s eye, Jeff laughing in heaven as the kids enter those teen years and I lose the few hairs I have left on my head after raising 2 kids to adulthood! The hole he left, as have many others, can never truly be filled because a DADDY is just that important in a child’s life!
