Father’s Day

I don’t real­ly have a con­cep­tion of what Father’s Day is like for dads in two-par­ent homes. By the time I reached the age where I could effec­tive­ly under­stand what it might mean to my own father, he was no longer a part of my life. My son does­n’t know what it means any more than I did at his age. It takes a long time to grow into empa­thy. I don’t get a lazy day of praise from wife and chil­dren. I don’t sleep in or skip church. I make the boy break­fast, take him to church, help clean up his spills and help him make a store for his cars to shop at. I do all the things a father does every oth­er day of the year. Basi­cal­ly, the day is just like any oth­er Sun­day with my son — for the most part. Maybe it’s like that for all fathers, Odin’t know. (My god, I think that’s the worst pun I’ve ever made.)

What’s dif­fer­ent is that I reflect — and I get a tad defen­sive. Most days of the year I don’t think about what peo­ple think about when they see us out and about, but on Father’s Day I kind of assume that they’re think­ing “Dude has his son for Father’s Day,” which, in my mind, is short for “unmar­ried unin­volved father spend­ing court-man­dat­ed time with his off­spring.”

Look. I know that’s crazythought. But I’ve heard its echoes from folks I know, who see tons of unac­com­pa­nied dads out on Wednes­days (the typ­i­cal week­ly overnight for stan­dard par­ent­ing sched­ule dads), feed­ing their kids at the Hot Dog Din­er or the like. I always feel there’s an impli­ca­tion that these dads are doing the min­i­mum, and that when I’m iden­ti­fied as a sin­gle dad, I’m also assumed to be doing the min­i­mum. If there’s one thing that is cer­tain to get me hack­led, it’s being thought of as some­one who does­n’t take respon­si­bil­i­ty or do his best. There’s cer­tain­ly still a stig­ma to being a sin­gle par­ent, and I’d argue, the stig­ma is worse for sin­gle dads. There are so many sin­gle dads out there who do the min­i­mum or less, and it reflects upon the sin­gle dads who actu­al­ly give a hoot.

It’s also a hefty por­tion of per­son­al inse­cu­ri­ty and a lit­tle resid­ual shame on my part for being taught that there is some­thing shame­ful about being a sin­gle par­ent.

Out of all of that inter­nal­ized roil I sit in a boat above it and reflect. And I think, for me, Father’s Day is becom­ing, and like­ly will con­tin­ue to be, an exam­i­na­tion of con­science on what it means for me to be a father. How I’ve been doing. How I can be bet­ter.

6 thoughts on “Father’s Day”

  1. You know at the beach today watch­ing you with Bram, I was just remem­ber­ing back in col­lege, think­ing you were going to be a great dad some­day, and think­ing how right I turned out to be.

  2. Good morn­ing Adam,

    Take this sen­ti­ment com­ing from a boy who also expe­ri­enced the sin­gle-par­ent lifestyle and was raised by the world’s great­est father, with all the love and admi­ra­tion entailed:

    Being a father, you’re doin’ it right…

    Do all you can to make today a good day,

    Jeff

  4. Good morn­ing Adam,

    You’re wel­come.

    A part of my life that has con­fused my fam­i­ly, and those clos­est to me, was my ear­ly deci­sion (before I was 20) to nev­er inten­tion­al­ly father chil­dren.

    I nev­er took the ulti­mate step of hav­ing a vasec­to­my (although in hind­sight, I would have done if I’d had access to med­ical insur­ance that would pay for the surgery) but I did take every oth­er rea­son­ably pre­cau­tion to pre­vent becom­ing an acci­den­tal father.

    My deci­sion was based on my self-aware­ness that I am too self-cen­tered to make the sac­ri­fices demand­ed by prop­er father­hood. I great­ly admire those able to do so and I’m ever grate­ful to those who shoul­der the task; I just know that I’m not father mate­r­i­al.

    Near­ly 40 years lat­er, I have no regrets.

    Do all you can to make today a good day,

    Jeff

  5. Dear Adam,

    You and I have a few things in com­mon. We were raised by the same father until the age 11. Even raised in the same house at dif­fer­ent times of our lives; 514 Franklin Street in Con­nersville. We both have very intel­li­gent moth­ers who were smart enough to remove us from a verbally/mentally abu­sive home before we became teenagers. We are both col­lege edu­cat­ed, well estab­lished in our careers, able to con­tribute to soci­ety in a pos­i­tive man­ner, and we are par­ents.

    Look­ing back I feel that I was­n’t there for you dur­ing your times of strug­gle. I have no excus­es and will claim no jus­ti­fi­ca­tions for my pre­vi­ous actions (or inac­tions as it were). I do hope you accept my sin­cer­est appol­o­gy for not being a bet­ter old­er sis­ter.

    I am not sure how you feel about me. How­ev­er, I am not the type of per­son to hold grudges. I have learned to for­give quick­ly so that my heart will heal and I can move on with my life in a peace­ful man­ner. That being said, I was hop­ing that you and I might be able to resolve our dif­fer­ences and work on repair­ing our rela­tion­ship.

    We will be on a fam­i­ly vaca­tion next week and stop­ping in Cleve­land for the night on Wed. July 25th. I will send your mom my cell phone num­ber in an email in case you are inter­est­ed in meet­ing with us.

    Thank You for let­ting me speak my piece,

    Pamela Kaye Har­vey

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