Joy, Sacrifice, and Cattails

“These are cattails, Papa!”

When we were at the Metropark, I had another one of those moments where I can see the world through our sons’ eyes. “Dang,” I thought, “Bo finds joy, somehow, wherever he is.”

And I began to contemplate, how does he do that? Bo was as happy, peaceful, and silly-seeking as he ever is finding Cattails with Mommy and chasing Dadi around a tree, on this grassy pointe we were on at this lake, on an otherwise unremarkable Saturday morning. 

And I was nostalgic, perhaps even a bit jealous as I watched him, laughing and enjoying the outside.

What happens to us along the way that makes it so that such little pleasures aren’t enough?

Later that week it hit me, one day our sons will grow out of this mindset too, and it will be my fault. 

As they grow, I will teach them to sacrifice for the future. I will have no choice but to. Trade one cookie now for two cookies later sort of stuff. Or, study now so you can earn a living later. Or, that kid came a long way to play here, want to help him up the slide instead of going yourself?

All the examples, and more, are ones that hold the basic structure of: invest for the future so the future can be better, it will be worth the wait.

And that point of view, will probably lead to him believing that there’s more to life than cattails, so to speak. 

As part of this growing up and learning to sacrifice, he will form beliefs on what “better” and “worth the wait” are. And my big gasp came when I realized that he will learn that from me. 

As he learns to make sacrifice, his perceptions of why we should sacrifice will come from me. Should it be to lift up ourselves, or lift up others? Should we always strive for more? What is valuable, money and status? Character? Nature? Family? Being popular? Faith? 

My example will dramatically influence what our boys will perceive as valuable and therefore what they sacrifice for. 

I hope we can live up to that responsibility. And with any luck, at my age, Bo will still find joy in little things like cattails on a sunny day at the lake. 

Here Comes the Sun

We are a family that sings.

It has always been this way. When we first started dating, your mother and I would sing along to the radio when on car rides. And both of us grew up in households radiating with music, because your grandparents love music.

Even the city where we live, Detroit, has a musical history. Motown Music - which your mother and I adore - was one of the most beloved sub-genres of music in the 20th century, and originated just a few miles from our house.

Your older brother sings to you when you are crying, already, just like your mother and I do.

I love to sing to you. And as it happens, you and your brother love the Beatles. Each of you, from the time you were both a few weeks old, took a liking to a specific Beatles song. In those early newborn days, I would try singing anything to rock you both to sleep and the Beatles are what you both responded to.

The Beatles song that comforts you, Here Comes the Sun, is a lovely tune. And it suits you.

One of the best ways to describe your emerging personality is that it is sunny. Your mother would often say, even at a month or two old, that "Myles is just happy to be here." Your smile and disposition, my son, is warm and calming.

By many accounts, your birth came at a dark time in contemporary human history. Just a few weeks after you were born, the novel coronavirus began spreading rapidly across the world, causing the worst pandemic any living person has ever seen.

The economic fallout of worldwide quarantine was also the most significant economic disruption any living person has probably ever lived through. And just a few weeks ago, the murder of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police sparked global protests of police violence and racism, which again, are unprecedented.

You arrived in our arms just in time for a truly exceptional time in history.

On the surface, then, the song that soothes you seems ironically timed. The coming of the springtime sun seems out of tune with the arrival of a global pandemic, depression, and episode of civil unrest. Indeed, when I first realized that Here Comes the Sun helped settle you for sleep, when I sang it to you I thought of it as a prayer. I wanted the long, cold, lonely winter to subside. I hoped for the sun to come, and soon.

But recently I've wondered if the timing of Here Comes the Sun rising to prominence in our lives was not a prayer, but rather a sign that a prayer was being answered.

You're too young to realize this, and I'm only starting to see this too. But there has been something interesting happening during this pandemic. In communities all across the world, including our own, I am seeing courage, compassion, leadership, and kindness to a degree I've never seen it before. People of all ages are making sacrifices. People in my age group, who are sarcastically characterized as being self-absorbed and indulgent, are leading with integrity and making sacrifices, too.

Through all the darkness and malaise of this pandemic I see rays of light. I see the beginnings of a change in mindset. What I pray for and hope for is that this pandemic shines a light on our culture and reminds us that we are capable of making sacrifices to solve difficult, existential problems. That we are capable of rising above adversity and petty differences.

And most of all, I see hope that in the next decades my contemporaries and I will choose to meet difficult, global challenges with courage and confidence instead of running from them.

For us, Myles, you were a prayer answered. And amidst all this struggle, your arrival here reminds me that the sun is, and always was, coming.

A high five and bat signal to my working dad brethren

I was furloughed from my job on Monday, March 30.

As a result my wife upped her hours and I luckily fell into some part-time contract work. In normal circumstances this would be a monumental life change. But alas, in these times it’s only a contextual footnote.

We hit day 100 of staying at home with the kids, all day, this past Tuesday. It has been an awakening, particularly in how I think about being a father. The highlights of this awakening are probably not terribly different for you, if you’re also a young father.

First and foremost, it’s really damn hard to be lead parent, especially because we’re both working. I realized during this quarantine exactly how my wife puts our family on her back and carries us, day after day. It’s nothing short of astounding, and that’s not even emphasizing the economic value of that unpaid care-giving work.

But every day, I find myself thinking of this bizarre situation as a blessing. I get to be a stay-at-home dad. This was the paternity leave I never had the chance to have.

Being a working dad is frustratingly hard, and most days someone in our house has a meltdown, despite my best efforts. But being a full-time dad is the best “job” ever, most of the time. It has far exceeded my already high expectations. I would have never been able to understand what I was losing had this pandemic never happened. To boot, consistently getting the really hard reps of solo-parenting has made me a much better father. It’s embarrassing how clueless I was three months ago. What a blessing this has been.

It’s remarkable that so many dads are experiencing this role-reversal at the exact same time. I think it’s an inflection point because a curious thing seems to be happening culturally.

If you’re a parent to young children, I wonder if you’ve noticed this too: being a “working dad” feels a lot more normal. It’s like being a “working mom” was a thing before and being a working dad is finally a thing now too. By that I mean working dads seem to have become a real constituency with a common set of experiences, preferences, and at least some awareness of its existence as a group.

Before the pandemic that mold we were forced into as working dads - and men generally, to some degree - was much more rigid. To be a working dad was to grind at work, not talk about your kids much unless asked or unless you were complaining a bit. You talked about sports, business, alcohol, or politics with your buddies. You help out your partner but you’re still the primary breadwinner and they’re the primary caregiver, and those roles have specific expectations. And maybe you have one relatively masculine and socially expected hobby like working out, brewing beer, playing fantasy football, trying new restaurants, woodworking, a side hustle, or something like that.

And I could go on describing this persona, and I admit that I’m painting in broad strokes - but if you’re a parent of young children you hopefully intrinsically understand the motif I’m outlining. And candidly, the mold of what I feel like I am supposed to be as a young father is frustrating on a good day and sometimes becomes suffocating.

But something feels different now.

Most nice days over the past three months the boys (Bo, Myles, and our pup Riley) and I would go for a walk in our neighborhood before lunch time. Along the way we met a lot of neighbors. That was fun and expected.

I did not expect to meet a lot of other young fathers who were walking with their kids just like I was. Some were also furloughed, and everyone I met actually talked about it openly. Others were still working but were also splitting parenting duties with their partners. I even saw one of my neighbors outside this past week with his baby daughter on his lap, taking a conference call.

And, these neighborhood dads and I, we actually had conversations about what we’re thinking and feeling about as fathers right now, even if briefly. And these conversations with my neighbors about fatherhood had the same kind of easy, open feel as the conversations I hear my wife having with other moms. These were conversations that rebelled against the rigid, masculine, mold I’ve felt restrained by.

This is the first time I ever felt a culture of working dad-hood growing into my day-to-day life. Prior to this pandemic, I only ever talked openly about being a working dad quietly and with my closest friends. Now it’s something that feels more acceptable, probably because this pandemic has given young fathers a shared and significant life experience.

And now that many of us working dads are starting to go back to work and more “normal” activity is happening, I see this change more clearly. And I think it’s for the better. But my call to you, my working dad brethren, is that we cannot put up with some of this BS around being a parent any longer. We have to be done with this foolishness.

When we go back to work, we can’t put up with:

• Feeling awkward about taking our kids to the doctor or cutting out of work early to care for our families

• Hiding the stresses of being a working dad

• Ridiculous policies that don’t provide men (or women) enough paid leave after birth or adoption

• Poorly managed teams that have meetings that always run over or go back to back. Our time is too valuable to waste on nonsense

• Workforces that don’t have gender diversity, and therefore skew toward a culture of being an old-school boys club

• Working all the time and being expected to work during family and leisure time

• Work cultures that emphasize useless face time at an office. I’m not even convinced that most companies are managed well enough to see a measurable difference between co-located teams and remote teams

There’s so much more we shouldn’t put up with; these are only a handful. Especially now that we understand being working fathers so much more intimately than we did three months ago, we should hold ourselves and our companies to a higher standard.

And the best part is, refusing to tolerate this foolishness is not just the right thing to do or a timely topic, I think it’s very possible that if we hold ourselves and our teams to a higher standard it’ll lead to higher profits, happier customers, and thriving teams.

Working moms have been pushing this agenda for some time, and I think it’s time for us join them in a big way.

Imagining a world with less shouting

Robyn forwarded me a three-day “no-shout challenge” that she heard about through a speaker at conference she attended. I made it two and a half days, and every hour was hard. I didn’t realize how much I shouted at my son until I tried to stop.

The challenge helped me to understand why I shouted and think of an alternative pattern of behavior.

Upon reflection, I realized that I shout because my most foundational belief about parenting is that what I owe my sons - above all else - is to help them become good people. So when my son deliberately screams to wake up his big brother, or bites me, or doesn’t follow what I believe to be a high-standard of conduct, that moves me from zero to ten in a second. That’s my baggage, not his.

I decided that my replacement behavior would be to say, “neither of us are perfect, but we are going to figure this out” when my temper was rising, instead of shouting.

But the point here is not that I am cured of shouting (I’m not even close). The point is to share what happened after I started shouting less.

We have been struggling a lot as a family during this pandemic. In many ways, this period of our lives has been a blessing, but it has been a trying time. Our elder son, now, is very aware of the virus and he misses our family, his friends, and his teachers at school. He’s confused about why he has to give far-away hugs and why he can do certain things but not others.

He’s also a toddler, so we have had power struggles over really small things as is the case with most families.

But when Robyn and I started this challenge and began shouting less, something changed for the better in our house. In a word, everything deescalated.

We still all have tantrums, but they are less intense. We still have power struggles, but we’re able to take a breath more quickly that before. Bo says “excuse me” to get our attention more, instead of screaming indiscriminately. Sometimes, instead of shouting we find a way to talk about his sadness and confusion, even though he barely has grasp of the words and concepts needed to express what he’s feeling.

Again, there is still shouting in our house, and I’m not proud of how I act on many days. But even just shouting less has created more space to listen, love, and resolve the very real problems we have. We have not reached the promised-land of a fully peaceful house, but we are on a different trajectory than we were.

While this was all happening, Robyn and I have been observing, listening, and talking intensely every night about the problems of race in our country. It its something that we are deeply stirred by, personally and professionally.

Because we saw a reduction in shouting bring about real and almost immediate change in our own household, I can’t help but wonder what might happen if we shouted less when trying to resolve community issues.

Say if we all just decided we would stop shouting for a week or a month, what would happen? In my wildest dreams, I wonder if that could be the very humble beginning of a transformation that eventually got us to a moment where we could live in a community where shouting was no longer needed.

The skeptic in me feels that this type of scaling is difficult and perhaps impossible. After all, Robyn happened to attend a conference, where she heard a speaker, who shared a no-shout challenge, and we happened to try it out. Getting to the point of trying to intentionally shout less resulted from a lucky mix of circumstance, humbling work, and serendipity.

In our household - whether it is us as parents or our children - someone had to take the first step. And luckily, it is clear that the first step to a no-shout home was our responsibility as parents.

But with complex disagreements that are compounded by hundreds of years of pain and violence - like race, poverty, and others - it’s less clear whose responsibility it is to take the first step. Moreover, that first step of not shouting takes incredible courage, humility, and grace.

I pray that I can summon that courage, humility, and grace whenever I need to take that first step. Being ready to take that first step is something worth preparing for, even if my number never is called to lead in that way. It is for all of us.

"You should PRAY."

At the end of the pandemic I think we’ll each have two numbers that we each identify with. I’m a one and seventy-three. I know one person who died (thank God it’s not higher) and day 73 is about the time I started cracking.

After being furloughed, intense days with two children under three, snow and heat, intense remote work back with the Police Department (with said children at home), and social isolation - all these things were hard, but they didn’t bother me that much. What finally got me were the faraway hugs.

Our older son, Bo, has been talking about going to his grandparents’ house “after the virus is gone” for weeks. We finally saw my mom a few days ago and Robyn’s parents and brother tonight. And Bo knew that he had to maintain a safe distance, but that it was okay to give “faraway hugs” where he squeezes his arms across his chest, leaning forward and smiling.

Seeing Bo have to give his grandparents hugs from a distance snapped something in me. After 10 weeks of unprecedented struggle, that’s what broke me down.

—

The boys (Bo, Myles, Riley) and I went on a long walk today. And I turned to Bo and told me that I didn’t know what to do - about my job, about my stress, about all this.

“What should I do, bud?”, I said sincerely, urgently.

I didn’t hear what he said the first time. And then he clarified, with emphasis, from his stroller, clutching his water bottle:

“You should PRAY, papa.”

And that’s when I started to feel like I was coming back together again.

Finally made it to the moon

I went to the moon recently and safely returned.

Here is a picture of a moon crater we saw:

We meaning my older son Bo (Myles was asleep at the space station).

I have dreamed, and by that I mean sincerely dreamed, of going to space ever since I can remember. I still do. Space travel is a not entirely secret obsession of mine.

But if the only spacecraft I ever traverse the heavens in is the one in our attic, that would be better than my 6-year old self, dreaming of the moon, ever imagined.

A little, gracious, reminder that life is worth the trouble of eventual death

We are celebrating Bo’s birthday with family tonight, which makes it a special day. I am in our dining room, on a Friday, but I am working from home. Robyn and I are having lunch. Bo is napping, which he especially needs today because he has a tough cold.

Like she had done for our son’s first birthday the year prior, Robyn has affixed some simple decorations. It may even be fair to call them spartan. There is a single “Happy Birthday” hanging banner, recycled from when Robyn’s colleagues decorated her desk. The rest of the decor are only pictures.

They are of the past year. They are individually placed in the panes of our driveway window and the french doors from dining room to foyer. There are some more photos in the doorway to the kitchen and some on our marble fireplace mantle. They are scotched taped, simply, gently. Robyn is as economical as she is thoughtful.

Bo is in all the photos, some are by himself and some are with others. These are pictures of special occasions, yes, but many are just every day life. A snuggle with Riley. Playing in the snow. Christmas day. Afternoons with grandparents. Family vacations. Walks along the river. A first haircut. Football tailgates where we rolled down a golf course hill.

Come to think of it, I misspoke earlier. Not all these photos are holidays or of particularly notable moments, but they are all special occasions.

Looking at these photos I feel many things simultaneously, but mostly two things. I feel love in my whole body, and I feel the passing of time.

These photos are befuddling because they remind me that with each year, with each birthday, my death grows nearer. Eventually Bo will have a birthday where I’m not here, in the flesh. But I still feel an unqualified joy…the purest happiness. Why? I don’t understand.

A moment passes. I take a breath. And I realize why I feel so happy in this moment where death feels especially identified. As much as I feel time passing - sitting here in this one room, in this one house, on this one street, in this one city on this pale blue dot, here in this moment - I realize. Looking at these photos…the opportunity for these photos, it is more than worth dying for. And this makes me feel love in my whole body.

And then I take another breath, deeper this time, and Robyn and I finish our lunch. And more time passes.

You are explorers.

Both of your grandfathers are sailors. It is important for you to know this. This is where you come from, being an explorer is who you are.

It is important for you to know this because you have an itch and you may believe it is there by accident. It is not. To know more, to reach further, to venture into the distance. You explore. You are an explorer, I already see it in you. You will explore, it is in your nature. Your mother and I honestly didn’t put it there, it was there when you were born.

It is not there by accident.

Both your grandfathers, as I said, are sailors. Your Granddad has been sailing since he was a boy. He loves the water. As far as I know, he always has. Everything he does is to learn, to grow, to try the new. His is an exploration of zeal and adventure.

Your Dada was also a sailor. He was an engineer on a ship. He sailed all across the world, fixing the boat’s engine. As a young man, he flew from India to Tehran and took a bus to the coast. From there he traveled the world, port by port. Your Dada was not an explorer because of a sense of adventure. Your Dada was a dreamer. He dreamed of a better life, in a place where the corruption did not cause common people to suffer. He loved the water, no doubt, but his exploration was one of tenacity and sacrifice.

And I, boys, am not a sailor. I have always been partial to mountains. And my appetite for exploration is one service. I need to know the truth, not just because the truth is divine, but in the knowledge is the key to leaving the world better than I found it. Which is what I must do, it is involuntary. My exploration is one of curiosity and vision.

And your stories, my sons, are yet to be written. But that voice inside, it is not a false prophet. You are the grandsons of sailors, and you are explorers.

So when that voice inside whispers to you, listen carefully. To be sure, it will be scary. Exploring is not comfortable. But your father before you, and my fathers before me…we were all explorers. And we, all the men in your ancestry, whether we are on Earth or gone ahead - look to the night sky and you will find us there, watching over you.

You are explorers. I hope this has helped you understand why.

How the iPhone taught me to be a better father to my son

The iPhone won. But that’s okay, because it taught me how to talk to my son.

Bo, our son, is fixated on my iPhone when it is around. My usual tactic was to take it away so that he would do something else instead of stare at a screen. Our parents faced the same problem, except instead of smartphones, they tried to restrict television and video games.

The problem with taking the phone away is that it doesn’t work. Bo does not just forget about it just being in his hands. Trying to force it from him only creates a power struggle between us. And no matter the outcome, it drains both of our energies.

Why does the iPhone win his attention? It’s really well designed.

First, it’s extremely responsive. I don’t think that the problem with screens is that they distract us, but rather that the screen is undistracted for us. The screen is fully focused on Bo. When he picks it up, it is ready for him. When Bo pushes a button, it does something. The iPhone is completely ready to react to Bo and it does so consistently.

It’s also kind and gentle. I’d even call it emotional - because of the colors, the lights, the sounds, and the way the screen seems to effortlessly glide. Even the haptic feedback is subtle and will calibrated. Nothing about the iPhone is jarring. It doesn’t yell at Bo, nor does it shock him. It is calm and predictable.

I don’t think in cliches like this, but I eventually thought something like, “if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em.”

Instead of taking the phone away, I began interacting with Bo, more like the iPhone does. I’ve tried to be more emotive, attentive, and consistent. With more touch and sound, and with more immediate responsiveness. With more peace and patience. More than anything, I try to be undistracted. I actually think it’s working. We both have more energy when we play together.

It is bizarre to think of it this way, but the iPhone taught me, very specifically, to be a better father. It upped my game. This is hyperbolic, I know, but the iPhone can appeal to basically all of the right senses to win my son’s attention.

But it cannot love. And if I do the basics right, like the iPhone taught me, I don’t think it will “win” in the long run.

—

On September 30, I will stop posting blog updates on Facebook. If you’d like email updates from me once a week with new posts, please leave me your address, pick up the RSS feed, or catch me on twitter @neil_tambe.

I am the last one up tonight

I didn’t need to be, but I am the last one up tonight. Well, Riley and me.

But I am, because I was watching a movie and (not really) working.

You are asleep. Your little Paddington Bear is snuggled up on your chest. My last acts before bed are easy. First, I put a blanket over you so you and Paddington wouldn’t get cold. I will crawl into bed and try to pray a little. Then I will kiss your mother, who is already sleeping, goodnight - as quietly as I can.

It took me awhile to really understand it, truly, but I know that these are the most important jobs I will ever do. No matter how I earn a living. Nothing could be more important than being your mother’s husband and you and your brother’s papa. Nothing.

—

On September 30, I will stop posting blog updates on Facebook. If you’d like email updates from me once a week with new posts, please leave me your address, pick up the RSS feed, or catch me on twitter @neil_tambe.

The beautiful, boring, lunch with Bo

I had the afternoon with Bo today. We had a late lunch because his nap extended past 1pm. I had an apple for dessert. Which is funny because when you’re above 30, an apple can actually count as dessert.

In any case, I asked Bo if he wanted to have some too. Bo enjoys fruit as much as I do, so he responded with a characteristic “ya.”

I cut a plane of it off the side and made it into small pieces, about the size of corn kernels.

And then about halfway through eating his slice of apple, he gently put a tiny piece between his thumb and forefinger and leaned in my direction, offering it to me. I opened my palm. He placed it inside. I ate it. It was nice, and very nice of him.

This, in our household, was not a special moment. it was business as usual. It’s not uncommon for Bo, or any other child I suppose, to offer a bit of food to his father. It was something so small, and so fast. Nobody would ever instagram a moment like that, and even if I tried I wouldn’t be able to - the moment passed too quickly. I took a breath in, and by the time I let my breath out the moment was over.

But in a given day these are the moments. They are small. They go quickly. They are not notable. By and large, nobody else will ever know about them.

But they are my life. These are the glimmers I will remember when my brain and body start to fail. All these little moments built up, a sinew that binds my mind and spirt together. Probably 98% or more of my life is these moments, that are boring and un-momentus as it were.

But I love them. The memory of how Robyn’s flip flops clap as we walk our boys down the sidewalk of our street on a Sunday morning. The particular way the water tastes from only our tap. The way Robyn squeezes my big toe when I need to move my leg for her to rise from the couch. Riley’s semi-frequent snoring. The very distinctive crackling of mustard or cumin seeds in the pan when my mom makes a vegetable for dinner. When my father would giggle at his own jokes, in the rare instance that he tried really hard to make one.

The extreme-vast-majority of my life are these little moments and idiosyncrasies that come in an out like a beating heart.

Which is perhaps why I have slowly lost interest in living in a way that produces notable moments. Living moment to moment, I’ve found is a distraction from actual life. I do treasure big moments when they come - like marriage, the birth of a child, or an accomplishment I’m proud of at work. But that is not life.

Those are merely milestones. Life is everything in between. I’ve been coming to a conclusion that the measure of my life is how I choose to act during the mundane but supremely special moments of everyday life. What’s difficult is that everyone else (that doesn’t really, really matter) measures my life by the number and magnitude of big moments I have. Because that’s all they can see, they’re not around for the small stuff and therefore can’t measure it.

Letting go of everyone else that doesn’t matter is so hard, because the big moments that those people care about are so much easier to measure. I think the key is listening. Because by listening we can focus on being the best person we can be in the 98% of moments that nobody else will ever remember, singing the songs that are playing deeply within our own hearts, and letting the big moments be a gift and a surprise when they arrive, rather than an aspiration.

I think Sister Mary Clarance and Ferris Bueller both had it right.

—

On September 30, I will stop posting blog updates on Facebook. If you’d like email updates from me once a week with new posts, please leave me your address, pick up the RSS feed, or catch me on twitter @neil_tambe.

Parenthood has made me less happy, and I’m cool with that

I’ve come to embrace the research which suggests that being a parent is bad for our individual happiness. Parents I now, myself included, have a lot of things that get in the way of being as happy as we were before.

Parents get crummy sleep. We stress about money. We have less free time, because we are tending to a kid. We don’t exercise as much, generally speaking. We don’t get to hang out with friends or go on dates as much as we used to. We also feel terrible pain and anxiety when our kids are going through struggles. We are split between work and home more intensely than our childless peers.

With all that added stress, no wonder parents are less happy, or at least not happier than non-parents.

But, that’s okay. I’m willing to have my happiness decline, because I’ve gained so much - patience, intimacy, love, silliness, peace, and confidence. And probably more. As a parent, I’ve traded happiness for so many other things.

I’ll take it. Happiness is such a temporary state of being anyway.

—

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Jealous of Bo

I am jealous of my son.  

I wish his childhood was mine, or that mine were more like his.  

He is surrounded by family. He has a deeper relationship with his grandparents, and more time with them already, than I did in my whole life. He has met 3 great grandparents.  

He knows his aunts, uncles, aunties, Godparents, and great aunts & uncles. He even knows the family friends of his grandparents.  

He lives in a mixed-race community. His mom is home with him twice during the work week. God willing, he will have a sibling in a few months. He has an older dog-brother.

He has so much that I didn’t.

We spend so much time as men, at least my buddies and I do, thinking about being providers and feeling the pressure of that identity.  

And yet, even though we are MUCH wealthier than my parents were at his age. That has rarely crossed my mind.  

Perhaps jealous is the wrong word. Gratefully envious is perhaps better. But whatever that word is, thank God that I’m it.  

— 

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The Paradox of Becoming a Father

I have only been a father for about three and a half weeks, but I already know enough to tell you that it's really hard. So hard, that'd I think it's fair to say that at least half the time (probably more) it feels impossible.

I feel guilty saying that because fatherhood is supposed to be the most amazing experience, and the day you become a father is the best day of your life, with the exception maybe of the day you got married. No, guilty is the wrong word - I feel like a wuss and a traitor saying this.

By the way, fatherhood is the most amazing, joyous thing I've ever done and becoming a papa was the best moment of my life, with our wedding day as an exception.

Which is the paradox - fatherhood is both the best and most debilitating feeling I've ever had.

It's hard in ways that I didn't expect. I expected to be exhausted, and I expected to feel like I was doing everything wrong. I expected to have a cluttered house. I expected having to cut tremendous amounts of time away from hobbies, exercise, and mindless entertainment.

I didn't expect feeling invisible and dispensable to most people (my wife and a handful of others being an exception to this - Robyn has made me feel indispensable, valued, and loved) and then embarrassed about feeling like my needs were overlooked. I didn't expect how much grief I still had stirring around my heart over the loss of my own father. I didn't expect that I wouldn't have a euphoric moment the moment our son was born and feel an instant connection of unconditional love like in the movies (I didn't). I didn't expect how having a baby immediately changes your relationship with your parents and immediate family. I didn't expect to feel as alone as I did.

And to be honest, I thought our kid wouldn't be one of those that cried inconsolably - he'd be an exception to the rule...obviously. Which luckily, he's not colicky by any means, but he is a newborn and newborns cry fairly often, sometimes for reasons that are not immediately obvious. (Full disclosure: I also didn't expect just how many diapers one sub-ten-pound human could fill in a day. It's unreal).

But I also didn't expect how much more I could love my wife now that she is a mother. I didn't think the outpouring of love we've received from family, medical professionals, friends, colleagues, neighbors we barely know, and even some strangers was possible, but it's real. I didn't expect how natural it feels to be with your own child and how quickly innate instincts take over.

That is the paradox of becoming a father, I suppose. It's so unbelievably trying, while still being better than just about any other season of your life.

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I wanted to share this because I felt blindsided by how impossibly hard the first few weeks of fatherhood would feel. This is my attempt to help any to-be fathers out there be a little more prepared than I was.

If there are any fathers out there than want to chat (or guest post!!), share blogs, or even just lend some advice to others in the comments - let's do it. Fatherhood is so hard and so important, I'll take all the help I can get and I think others would too.