My Son, the Boy. The Father

Are any of us ever ready to be a parent?

The baby shower was held at a popular pizza place not far from my son’s home. Good food and big smiles filled the room. Gifts lined the far wall. My daughter-in-law was glowing. She looked beautiful.

In the hallway near the restrooms during a break, my son stood alone in what appeared to be a deep personal space. I moved slowly to him, stood for a moment, and asked, “Are you ready for this?”

He straightened his back, looked away, crossed his arms at his chest, and lifted his chin to the world. “I am. I really am.”

It was in that very moment that I knew it was all going to be all right.

It’s hard not to see your adult children as, well, children. Yes, they go to school and they find jobs and they marry and buy home and get dogs and pay bills and do the things adults do. But a part of them is always your child, the little boy. Until that moment in the hallway of the pizza place, it had been hard to see him as anything but that vulnerable toddler, that uncertain teenager, that unsure young man who had no idea what he might do to build a life. It was hard to see him as someone who could raise another human being, care for them, be there for them. My son has a strong sense of community and responsibility to those he loves. His heart is always full. These attributes were never questioned. And I knew they would be magnificent ingredients for being a father. But yet, in my eyes there he was, that boy, still.

What changed in that moment in the hallway?

He changed. I saw it. A transformation. Something palpable. He had begun to shift right there, before my eyes from someone who understood he was going to be a father to knowing he would be a father. The understanding and the knowing are different states of mind. Understanding implies you can take in the facts and accept them. But knowing— truly knowing—means you are ready to believe in what is to come and to allow it to be who you are.

I don’t remember how this process manifested in my journey to fatherhood. In many ways for me it felt as if becoming a father was a separate, almost parallel state of mind. If the child wasn’t physically with me yet, not yet in my arms, then fatherhood was only a nebulous concept. We all know the sun will rise, and it will be incredible to experience, but until it actually slips over the horizon and the glory of it is before us, we cannot fully know the beauty of it. That’s how I felt about fatherhood.

I own a photograph of generations of fathers in my family. My great grandfather, my grandfather, my father, and me as a young boy stand together in a group in the old picture taken at a Christmas gathering many years ago. The photo is far more than what it might appears. The deep and complex disputes between those men at the time are hard to comprehend—the mistrust and the issues of abandonment. I know now that the photo was a forced one. The men in it didn’t all want to be there. But yet, there it was, and there it is—an image that represents the best and worst of the father-son relationship. There is no question, then and now, that being a parent, being a father, is far from an easy road, and the reality of that can’t be hidden in a holiday photograph.

At the end of the day when those who had attended the baby shower had said their goodbyes, my son and I loaded gifts into the back of his car. Friends of his had helped with the boxes and the bags, but now we stood alone in the parking lot next to one another.

“I don’t remember the baby showers we had for you,” I said. “Is that odd?”

My son smiled and put his hand on my shoulder. “I think it must be tough for you to think of a life before being a dad. As if everything that came before was just there to get you ready for it.”

The understanding and the knowing. It’s not the baby gifts, the readying of the child’s room, the ultrasounds in the doctor’s office. It’s not the new baby furniture purchased for the bedroom. It’s not the book of names that helped you choose the one you love the best. It’s not the cravings for strange foods and the late night runs to the grocery store. These things are part of the preparation, the understanding that comes in time at unexpected moments. The knowing however, is a level of awareness that is experienced only when you look into your baby’s eyes and hold them in your arms for the very first time. Only then do you know that you were meant to be a father from the very start.

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Photo by Liane Metzler