Hope On a First Father’s Day
When I was a kid I was always running scenarios. I didn’t have an imaginary friend, I didn’t play make believe. Instead, I’d consider different situations and try to simulate what might happen if I did x or y. A lot of this was oriented around the goal of not hitting the repeat button on the poverty and related circumstances I was experiencing as a kid. What would it be like to make enough money to pay the bills every month (and on time)? What would my kids be like? How could I apply what I was living through in the present to inform my parenting in the future?
In the years since striking out on my own I’ve been fortunate to find financial stability with a lot of luck, hard work and supportive friends, family & mentors. But the other part of that dream was having a family of my own. Like most kids who had it rough, I wanted to give my child a better life than I had as a way of redeeming those struggles.
Just before the pandemic hit, we decided to try for our first child. Throughout my wife’s pregnancy, I foolishly tried to play out all the possible parenting difficulties we were going to have when our son arrived. The first years I wasn’t worried about at all: I’m the oldest of 4 and I’ve long known that I eventually wanted kids. I love helping and taking care of people, so I knew I could deal with his first decade. Instead I fast-forwarded straight to the teen years and wondered about every major conflict we might have: grades, alcohol/drugs, and even how to share what I’d been through as a kid, while not beating him over the head with it like a guilt-trip cudgel. What would I say that would be just right for the moment? How would I respond that would differ from how my parents and I fought?
When he was born, all of that future fretting went out the window.
Newborn parenting during a global pandemic is a day-by-day, hour-by-hour job and suddenly all the simulations in my head didn’t matter. He was here, he was okay, and we’d figure out the rest.
Soon after he arrived someone told me that a single big conversation isn’t going to be the thing that will make or break his life choices. A lot of it is going to come from him seeing what we do, in the day-to-day. That took the pressure off a singular moment and applied it to a broader state of being, which somehow made me less stressed.
And so it has been a serene joy to continue acting as best as I can on my ideals about fatherhood. I took the full parental leave that was available (no email, no meetings) and was so happy to put all this nurturing energy toward my wife and son after they came home from the hospital. My night owl tendencies paid off as a super-power when I’d stay up with him through the night for feedings. He’s almost 9 months old now and he’s crawling everywhere. My heart melts, while I’m also incredibly humbled, when he looks up at me, lights up, and thunderously crawls to get to me.
I know I’m less than a year into fatherhood, but when I think back to when I was starting to run these bigger life scenarios, hoping to have a family of my own and give my kids what I was missing, I see now in my son the dream deferred finally made flesh.
There will be hard times and I know parenting is a lot of work. But much like when my wife and I got married and heard non-stop jokes/semi-serious comments from folks about how “your life is over” — love is worth the work.
I hope I can be the men who mentored me: men who were strong without raising a hand, loving with a firm voice, and who led with egoless love, not ego-driven insecurities. That I can spin trauma into gold.
For the first time since my son arrived, I recently looked at baby photos of myself my wife had pulled out. The lanky limbed similarities were striking enough to make one think of reincarnation or parallel dimensions. Genetic echoes. With this in mind, this first Father’s Day belongs to my son; to the little Remington who was dreaming of making this future child’s life better than his own; and to the army of people who kept that dreaming boy intact in more ways than just physically. I hope I can appropriately honor their love as a new dad.
That’s the big picture goal. But till that final dad report card comes in, today’s tasks include more baby proofing now that he’s speed-crawling around the house, then a long family walk while the weather’s nice. It’s a blessing here in Louisville when the summer humidity lets up and I don’t plan on wasting it.
