My dad lived to be 88 years old. During the decades I knew him he would occasionally say something to me that I never really understood until I had kids. And that was simply this: “I’m an amateur at this too.” He was so right. We’re all amateurs no matter how many kids we have because each child is unique. He was an amateur father with me, I an amateur son with him. We muddled through. Here’s the best thing I know about muddling through: Embrace your surprises.
My dad lived through things I cannot even imagine. He grew up during the depression wearing government-issued clothes of which he was so ashamed it left scars that stayed with him his entire life. He was in the Merchant Marines during WWII. He was a pacifist who nonetheless saw the horrors of WWII and the necessity of helping those suffering because of it. He served on unarmed ships taking food and medical supplies from South America to India, China, and the Philippines. He was a strong man with a cotton-soft interior that I thought was pretty cool.
Fatherhood. I always had mixed emotions about fatherhood.
My wife and I always knew we were going to adopt a child. We were professionals, we had health insurance, we’re dedicated, and we can do this. Adopt a child absolutely. So we did all the paperwork, went to the classes, had the inspections and we were good to go. Then we waited a while, got on with our lives. One day the county called. They had a child and were we interested in learning more? Sure we said. Well, he was a little failure to thrive, a little language issue. That’s no problem.
The day we met our son he came running over to us, hugged us, and we were a family from that second. The county was very cool – they were going to try to push it so he could be with us by Christmas. Ryan came to our home on Christmas Eve, and we’d only had a week or so to prepare. We put a boy’s bedroom together in a day. He came to our home on Christmas Eve and I was an amateur. And he didn’t care.
Our daughter was born a few years later – she apparently wanted a brother in the house first. She came to us in February 2007 and when she was born the attending held her up for me to see and Paige opened her eyes for the first time and I looked into them and saw eternity. She looked into mine and smiled. I was an amateur. And she didn’t care.
Reflections on fatherhood. I don’t know anything about fatherhood. I know about diapers, and feedings, lack of sleep, owies, blisters, softball, and soccer, and homework and getting rid of things that go bump in the night. I know about driving lessons, and outgrown clothes. I know about the start of dating, the intricacies of school friendships, little girls and their friendships….little girls and their friendships…..and I don’t want to solve for X, you solve for your own x. I couldn’t do it the first time and now I’m teaching you? Go ask your mother!
On a trip to the Grand Canyon we drove through Phoenix. My father grew up in Phoenix in the 1930s. 110 degrees in the summer, no air conditioning. Dirt poor. He and his brother used to crawl under a fence in the back of a junk yard, steal a piece of iron, put in in a wagon, pull it to the front of the junk yard and sell it and if you do that enough times you can collect a dime and go see a movie in an air-conditioned theater.
We drove by the little house he grew up in and we drove by the school he attended. It was closed, had been closed for years. Falling apart, graffiti on the walls and out in front was the flagpole and we took a photo of my son standing on the base of the flagpole his grandfather had faced when saluting the flag so may decades earlier. The interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part.
My father’s father, my paternal grandfather died when I was two years old and I never knew him. But I have one thing of his. I have a small battered suitcase with barber tools in it. The man was a barber, “shave and a haircut, two bits.” And somehow the kids were mostly fed. My mother’s father, my maternal grandfather helped build Howard Hughes’ Spruce Goose, worked on railroads, and somehow the kids were well fed.
One grandfather I never knew, the other was a hero of mine. He used to let me drive his old Dodge truck and pound nails in the dirt he later had to try and pull out. One I knew, one I didn’t. We’re all amateurs.
A few years ago my father said that he had something to tell me. He told me about his first marriage, a painful war marriage that was doomed form the start. My dad was on ships and rarely home. It was what it was. He mentioned that there was a child but he never looked for the child because during a bitter divorce his wife told him the child wasn’t his.
I met that child a couple of weeks ago. A man now of course, older than me, who lives in Washington state. He’s had a good life but mentioned that when his mother died a few years ago he found his birth certificate going through her things and it was my dad’s name on that certificate. He decided that finding his farther was something to add to his bucket list and one day started looking. He found my dad’s obituary. He was too late but he eventually decided to seek out any siblings. He found me and we had a great meeting. I had a great father and my brother had an absent one because of a bitter divorce. Dads, don’t let your own pain move to a new generation. Embrace your surprises.
We’re all amateurs. We live through the highs and the lows. The heights of the birth of a child, the heights of the hug of a child, the heights of the hug of a father, the lows of giving pain to a father. The hardest thing I have ever done in my life is look in my father’s eyes and tell him that his daughter had just passed away. Embrace your surprises.
Reflections on fatherhood. I’m an amateur father and son and brother. But I’m learning. I know that this doesn’t have to be as hard as we often make it. We fathers are all amateur fathers but that doesn’t mean we can’t be great amateurs. Embrace your surprises.
Photo by Ranjeet Chauhan (Pexels)
Words + Dreams 
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