He texts me to find out if I’m
spending the afternoon in my art studio. When he discovers I am, he asks if he
and the baby can come over and hang out. Mama is
enjoying a change of scenery, putting in a few hours at a part-time job. An hour later
he shows up with a backpack slung over his shoulder (the new, hip diaper bag) and his precious
cargo buried under blankets in the basket he’s ejected
from its base, anchored in the car for safe travel. He looks exhausted, admitting this is the first time he’s spent
an entire day alone caring for his child.
It’s tender and sweet and endearing.
He’s not
complaining by any stretch. It’s more like he’s shell-shocked,
in the way your new first-grader looks when he
comes home on Day One and falls asleep at the dinner table, overwhelmed by the
havoc paying rapt attention and following new rules wrecks on a system
conditioned to move at a much less demanding and looser pace.
My son just turned 23, an age I considered far too young for
myself to be a parent. But when
I compare him to my own father, who was just 25 when I was born, I begin to realize he’s not too
young to find his way. Sure, the
world is dramatically different today. Everything costs more, the pull of
wanting more and living beyond your means is more persistent and prevalent than
ever. We’re a conflicted nation, mortally
afraid of robots or immigrants stealing our means to make a living. And what I
find most sad, the puzzle pieces of humanity lay in a
jumbled pile, dormant
on the table of our society: The
perpetual, unfounded fear of our differences preventing us from picking up the
unique pieces and fitting them together to make an unstoppable whole.
But when I look back to the mid-1960’s when my own father was launched into
parenthood, our country was just as violently divided and volatile as it is
today, maybe even more so. The
Vietnam war pitted Americans against each other; the
weapons of the civil rights battle reduced to spitting on our fellow humans and
assassinating public figures who presented the means and the passion to make
change.
What’s been comforting and stable for me across these four generations is our family values. I celebrate the joy I see in my son’s heart as he drinks in all being a father means to him. I see him yearning to create the family he pictures in his mind’s eye. It’s not lost on me that he has aching gaps from his own childhood he’s determined to fill. Don’t we all? I admire his conviction in himself to be the change he wants to see in his world.
And I’m grateful for all my father was
able to teach me. We single mothers like to claim we can do it all ourselves. It makes us feel better for the impossible choice we make when we concede to divorce and allows us to forgive ourselves just a tiny bit for not being up to the challenge of co-parenting.My father gave me a far richer and diverse point of view to pass
on.
Even though he’s less than a year into this, I
catch glimpses of my own father in my son. The way
he has embraced his responsibility to support his family, improving his own
position with a new job with benefits. The moves
he’s made to
nest in a safe and healthy neighborhood. The games
he plays to make his baby smile and laugh. The way
he glows with pride when he looks at his child.
Happy Father’s Day to the new father I
carried, bore and raised, and to the father who raised me. In a world where very little is
certain, I’m certain fathers pass a steady guiding light
down through the generations, a light that’s solidly
anchored in our souls, the one that tells us we have it within ourselves to
find the way.
