On Father's Day

This weekend represents the first time I have been a father on Father's Day. Last year at this time, the Wife was showing, so I will admit that I pressed the definition of technical fatherhood with a local restaurant's "Dad's Eat Free" Promotion. I think I heard the waiter cursing lawyers under his breath the whole time, but I got my free hot wings. This year is a little different, what with the baby being on the outside and all. I may or may not take advantage of the free wings again.

Fatherhood has been a frequent subject, directly and indirectly, of the posts in this blog. It is not the whole of what a man is when he has a child or children, but it certainly does its share to define him as a person. Fatherhood changes you. Hopefully, if you are a father, you have experienced love before - love for your parents and family, and ideally love for the woman you share a child with. But the love of a father for his child is completely different from these other loves. Not to say greater, but different. Unlike a parent or a spouse, a child is a child -  completely helpless and dependent on you for survival, knowledge, skills, affection, everything. A father's love for his child is as deep and resounding as it is because it resonates with hopes and dreams you have for that child's future, with our responsibilities, with the joy of watching that child grow day-by-day, and the delight of seeing them develop into the person they will become. These are all things that, by and large, are not all that similar to our love for our parents and spouses. Adult parents and spouses don't need our help to survive, they have their own hopes and dreams, and, by the time we meet them, they are generally far along the path of character development. But a father has great power in shaping a child, morally, ethically, spiritually, physically (although this latter aspect is mostly genetic). As Stan Lee is credited with saying, with great power comes great responsibility.

Fatherhood gives you new perspective. In an ideal world, it gives you added patience. At a minimum, it frequently exercises the patience you already had. Children need all the time. They are the definition of consumers. They consume time, energy, resources, and until they reach a certain age they are unable to communicate what it is that they need to consume. Hence the patience thing. Objectively, they give you nothing in return. Subjectively, nothing they could ask of you is too much for the joy they bring.

I cannot fully describe what it is like to be a Dad. Even if I could it would mean nothing, because despite shared experiences most fathers would have, every experience of Fatherhood is unique. To anyone who hasn't yet experienced fatherhood, my descriptions would be inadequate in any event. All I can say is that there is nothing like it in the world. Olivia's laughter brings me more delight than the view from the heights of a  mountain, her smile is more beautiful than a sunset, and the simplest demonstrations of her ever-expanding set of skills - gripping a spoon, standing, throwing toys on the floor - are more awe-inspiring than the greatest feats of man's ingenuity. Watching every single "first" as she experiences it is priceless. I love this child more than words can say, and she has me utterly and completely at her mercy. Thankfully, she is still too young to fully understand that.

It is humbling to think that there are people who loved me this way as well. Intellectually we all know, unless we are from a rough background, that our parents love us. We see demonstrations of it all our lives. You never doubt your parents' love for you, but you do not fully appreciate it either. It is something else entirely to go from conceiving of a parent's love for us in the abstract, to experiencing it, and realizing that your own father and mother experienced that for you - had those hopes and dreams for you, felt the same pressures and fears, delighted in you the same way you do in your own child.

So this is my twist ending - this post is only ostensibly about my own experience as a father. As yet, I am too inexperienced with the concept to have anything more to say than rambling sentiments on the subject. But what my experience has taught me is, I think, a better and deeper understanding of my own dad. Somehow, socks and ties seem an insufficient gift this year, and in any case, the Wife does all the gift buying anymore because she's better at it than I am. The only gift I could come up that seemed appropriate for my old man this year was the public embarrassment of a blog post sappier than any Hallmark Card I could ever hope to buy. Happy Father's Day Dad. I love you too.

requiem

I don't normally spend much time on this blog on things that are very serious. There's enough seriousness in mainstream media that I think there are better ways to spend my efforts on a glorified vanity page.

But some things should not pass without being noted.

Tonight I lost a friend to cancer. Fred was diagnosed a little over a year ago, but by the time they found it, it was metastatic. He fought, and he kept living life to the fullest extent he could. He traveled. He did projects around his house I'm not sure I could have managed with a healthy body thirty years younger. He spent every moment he could with his friends and family. Two weeks ago he went into the hospital, and he never left. Today was his birthday.

Fred was a good man. That phrase gets thrown around, but the truth is there are too few good men left. He expended himself for others more than most people I've ever met. He was a committed Christian, and even in facing this disease he would tell anyone who would listen that he was not afraid of dying - just the suffering beforehand. I'm a Christian too, and I believe we are promised eternal life, but I'm not sure I could honestly say the same thing were I in his shoes. In any event, even the part that worried him is behind him now and he is better for it. This side of heaven just feels a little emptier now.

I met Fred through the Orangeburg Part-Time Players, a community theater group in my home town. He was a founding member, had served onstage or off- in every capacity possible at one time or another, and had literally built the stage the group called home with his own hands.  I was a stupid teenager who got talked into trying out  for a musical by a girl. Despite that, Fred still thought I was worth calling a friend. We worked on many plays together, and he gave me my first summer job during college. We stayed close and I saw him nearly every time I came home to Orangeburg, even when I no longer considered Orangeburg home. He was at my wedding, and my sister's, and he got to meet my beautiful daughter Olivia, for which I am profoundly grateful. He called out the best in the people around him, probably in large part because we knew there wasn't a thing in the world he wouldn't do for us. We wanted to give our all in return.

The worst part of growing up, I think, is that time isn't trucking by for you alone. Everyone else is getting older right along side you. If you live life at all, if you love and share your life with other people, then inevitably you open yourself up to hurt when time takes it's inevitable toll on those around you. And cancer is one of the more pernicious ways this happens. I've lost family to it. Recently a wonderful woman who was a surrogate mother to half my high school class lost an incredibly long battle to cancer. And now Fred.

The last few weeks, visiting Fred in the hospital, a line from one of my favorite bands has played on loop in my head:
There is God in the way that life comes to an end; in the way we all draw to a close; 
In the saying of soul to the house of the skin; you're too weak now to really oppose...
It has kept repeating not because it was easy to see God in the way my friend died, but because I had to remind myself that God was in it even though I couldn't see it. Fred is home. The loss felt by those of us still here does not change that at all.

There will probably not be any grand media coverage, no CNN updates about Fred's passing. He was not a celebrity except to the patrons of the OPTP. And the passing of good men is rarely noted as it should be. But he will be remembered, and those of us who remember him are better for having known him. I am, truly, incredibly grateful to have been able to call him a friend.

Requiescat in Pace, my friend. Until we meet again.