I remember my first day of school. I was terrified. I was lost. My mother was reassuring me that everything would be alright. I felt, no, I knew, down in the pit of my stomach that I was ill-prepared for what was coming. That day and the following days ahead with their requirements and their needs were going to eat me whole. Nothing in my short life had given me any of the knowledge I would need to avoid being torn to shreds.
And that same terror returned to me some thirty years later when I found out I was going to be a father.
Orlando entered our lives. And he rocked everything to its core. From the medical hoops and hurdles to the brain-sizzling lack of sleep to everything I thought I knew and didn't, never before in history had 5 lbs. and 5 oz. been so mighty and life-changing. He was like that asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs and changed our world forever. I wondered if that equally devastating space rock was also only a third of a pound?
I have learned one lesson about fatherhood that is unquestionable - when a man becomes a father, he has learned to be one from either the presence of a father or the lack of one. We are made by either example or void - created by the man who created us or created by the heart-breaking silence of that man's absence.
There is also another truth to fatherhood that I have discovered. And your reaction as you read it will solidify its truth. Ready? Here goes - being a father can be hard. See? You, like so many others who have either read that sentence or heard it just rolled your eyes and said aloud or thought "Please! Mothers have it hard!" And that is one of the main reasons why fatherhood can be hard (notice I said can be.) We as a people do not place much value on fathers. Sure, when it’s time to play catch or assemble some toy, we've put Dad in those boxes. But when it comes to knowing a child's clothing size or medicine dosage or what clothing to wear or even how that child is doing, the idea that a father can know such things is mind-boggling. We have in our mind's a picture of fathers as (at best) well-meaning but bumbling or (at worst and most often) disinterested and disconnected. And when one hears that being a father can be hard, it is a knee-jerk reaction to throw out a comparison of moms and their struggles.
"Moms have to carry a watermelon for nine months and then push it out!" That is mind-shatteringly painful. There is no logical person that would believe otherwise!
"Moms have to nurse the baby! They have to learn to live without that feeling inside of them!"
"Moms lose their bodies to the pregnancy and then have to try to get it back if they want to!" No man should ever comment on that statement.
All the statements above are true.
Not sure if I can eat watermelon the same now...
But the idea that being a dad can be hard does not mean that being a mom must be easy. Or that one job has to be harder than the other. Both roles of parenting are tough because you are both building a person! You need a permit to build a building! To build a person you just need Marvin Gaye.
If you didn't get that, Google Marvin Gaye music and then ask your parents.
Mother's Day is one of the most commercially successful holidays. It is marketed like crazy nearly a month or two before it arrives. Everyone from florists to travel agents to every store across the land will try to get a piece of mom.
Terrible image there, sorry.
But Father's Day is an afterthought. Even for the best of dads. Even for the cold-fighting, homework-doing, clothes-washing, house-cleaning, child-loving fathers out there. Sandwiched between Graduations, Memorial Day and the Fourth of July, we've managed to squeeze in a day where we go and buy an ugly tie, some fishing item or whatever drugstore item we think Dad will want.
Mom needs to hear that you love her.
And Dads deserve it as well. One is not necessarily more beleaguered by parenting than the other.
So, go tell Pops you love him too.
Enjoy this book and the stories within. They run out of chronological order and each one has a different theme and lesson. It is my sincerest hope that they will all do the same thing – touch you and the dads in your life.
Chad Hunter