When my blogging partner, John and I were trying to come up with a name for the blog, we started by trying to figure out how to describe ourselves. John being the angsty Lit major that he is, insisted that alliteration was the key. “Disgruntled Dads?” Nah, too negative…besides, we’re more “Why-Can’t-You-Sleep-Past-6?! Dads” or “This-Book-Is-Terrible-And-You-Want-to-Read-it-Again?! Dads.”
Yeah, that’s about as far as we got before giving up. My daughter and his son decided to have a hug fest, which at their ages (both under 2) basically consisted of a lot of pushing each other over and rolling around before a head hit the floor and owner of said head sat there, crying for “mama.” It is here that I would love to say we had a flash of brilliance, but mostly, we were just laughing and forgetting to video tape the whole thing.
Distraction abated, we checked a thesaurus for synonyms for “father.” While words like “sire” and “pop” have a certain amount of appeal, “begetter” struck us in a way that few other words do. It’s a neutral word that says nothing about whether you’re an actual father. It merely means to cause to exist. It is a statement of biology rather than one of emotion or responsibility.
Motherhood is a long process of creation; A woman’s entire body and mind become dedicated to the new life forming within and the physical and emotional challenges of bringing it into the world. There is an intimate bond that forms while the child is little more than a vaguely human shaped mass of cell tissue. The child is theirs, formed from their own flesh and blood, to be protected and nurtured.
Fatherhood, on the other hand, is something we almost stumble into. One minute we’re holding our wives’ hair out of their face while they pray to the porcelain god and making odd runs to the grocery store in the middle of the night. The next, we’re holding this small creature, terrified we’ll break her if we so much as twitch wrong. We search for physical similarities and attach our last names to them, because frankly, aside from DNA testing, we have to take paternity on trust.
The bond between father and child is real, but intrinsically different than the mother’s. We create it and build it, and if we choose to be uninvolved, it does not exist. Mothers, if all is as it should be, will have that bond for life, even if they must give the child up at birth. We are a critical piece of the raising of a child, but our biological imperative is that of sperm donor. We are invited to participate in one of the greatest events of human experience, but we are also, at least at first, invited as an outsider.
We will never be the “mama,” as my young daughter made very clear when she hit her head or the floor. My attentions will do in a pinch, but if my wife is around, she lets me know I am not the one she wants. Thankfully, I have a thick skin! We will, however, still be present every step of the way, ready to dispense made-up wisdom and pseudo-facts or be the hero when the neighbor’s scary four pound bichon gets all licky.
So here begins the journey of two men experiencing what it means to be the father of young kids, fumbling through exactly what that means. We will talk about the mountain tops, the valleys, and things that make up the parental struggle. It will be a place to discuss stories, books, and whatever else comes to mind. We hope you’ll join us along the way.
-Jeremy
No comments:
Post a Comment