They Need Me To Lead

I believe in the practice of walking the talk, especially as a father. Because even as cliche as it is to say, actions definitely speak louder than words.

I know it, because I act like my father. At the hospital, the day before he died, some of his colleagues came to see us and warmly recounted how passionately my father would present a data analysis and how he’d gesticulate, wildly sometimes, to make his point. I never knew that about him, I thought, but I do that too. And sure as shit, when I see my sons, already, intonate their words up or make up pretend games about spaceships, I know they’re acting like me.

As a general rule, I don’t want to be a morally lethargic parent, allergic to even the smallest personal transformation, that cranks on with tropes like, “do as I say, not as I do”. Like, if I want them to stop picking their noses or stop exhibiting the desperate signs of needing to please authority figures, I have to stop doing that myself, or at a minimum be silent on the issue.

And yet, I’ve found a specific uncomfortable, alien, circumstance where I cannot do what I tell them to do.

What I tell them is something along the lines of:

“Bo and Myles, if you want your brother to stop hitting you, you need to tell them to stop, clearly. And if they don’t listen you need to tell them why. I’m here to help you if you can’t figure it out on your own.”

But if it’s bedtime and Myles is going around in circles to the point of running face first into wall of their shared bedroom, while Bo is jumping on his bed and giggling and screaming about the potty, I cannot do what I told them to do.

I cannot tell them to stop running and yelling because that attention just eggs them on and because this behavior, though irritating, is not expressly unsafe. This part is a practical matter.

But I also cannot tell them why I want them to stop. I cannot tell them that I desperately want to spend 20 minutes with their mother talking about something other than our daily grind or syncing up on parenting tactics. I cannot tell them I am exhausted and they’re keeping me from doing the dishes, and the dishes are keeping me from working, and my work is keeping me from sleeping. I cannot tell them how selfish they are for waking up their baby brother who is sleeping in the nursery across the hall. Even though every ounce of flesh in me wants to offload all this frustration and anger onto them…

I cannot ask them for help either. Maybe there’s some exception here but doing so is dangerous territory. I can ask them for help cleaning up toys off the floor, or handing me an infant diaper when my hands are full. But in the middle of a bedtime circus, it’s different - I cannot ask them to carry my emotional burden.

I’m their father, their papa. They need me to be sturdy. They need me to lead and to lean on. They are the sailboats and I must be their safe harbor. They are the explorers and I must be their map and compass. As the temperature rises, I must be their thermostats, not a thermometer.

To make sense of this world, their not-even-school-aged world, they need me. To reassure them that no bad guys will come to get them and take them away under cover of darkness and dreams, they need me. To be the one who stays steady, instead of retaliating, when they hit or scream or kick or spit or piss in anger, they need me. It won’t be like this forever, but for now, they need me to lead.

I have wondered for a long time about childhood, or what it’s supposed to be I guess. I just don’t remember having one. I did, at some point, exist as a child and in childhood, but what was it like? I can’t recall it, save for photographs and loose threads.

I had my early years and it was full of the acceleration you would expect for a middle-class, suburban, child of scrappy South Asian immigrants. And as I kept racing and pacing, my adolescence passed. So did my father, shortly thereafter. And as he left us behind him, I was growing ahead of my time, once again.

It’s as if the passing of my childhood was something I’ve always grieved, without having the presence of mind to use that word as it was happening.

I cannot shatter the glass ceiling of their innocence so early. I just can’t. Not yet. Not until I have to. I can’t thrust them into my world of struggle and responsibility just yet. I can’t get them to help me with the distortions in my own mind. I just can’t. I want them, so badly, to stay in their not-even-school-aged world a little longer.

I feel so often that parenting is a paradox. It’s excruciating but it’s the best. It’s a never-ending slog but it goes by too quickly. It ages you gray or bald, but also keeps you young. So this, it seems, is just the latest paradox - I need to walk the talk because actions speak louder than words, but not on this one thing…I just can’t on this one thing.