Loving strong on my son came quite naturally the moment he was born. Before he was born, was another story. I still remember my exact thought the moment I found out my first child was a boy.
“I am going to be the image-bearer of what a man, husband, and father should be for my son.”
Along with that thought, I still remember feeling afraid and inadequate because I did not know if I could rise to the occasion of meeting my son’s needs once he was born.
Rather than ignore my insecurities or allow inaction to dominate me due to my intense fear, I realized that I had to lean on those tools I acquired from years of therapy and from my graduate school experience. Both experiences required me to dig deep and revisit my inner child’s thoughts and feelings about being abandoned by both parents when I was three years old. From the place of my inner child, I once again felt the longing to be held and comforted by my father. I felt the yearning to be encouraged by my father. To be seen. Heard. And to have my feelings validated by my father. Through this process of reflection, I recognize I deserved all that and more from my father as a child.
From this years-long experience, I considered how my son could feel as he grew up if I did not match the time we were separated with meaningful experiences that demonstrated my unyielding love for him. Nothing could have destroyed me like hearing my son’s cries as I dropped him off at daycare once our time together came to an end. But, in an attempt to comfort myself with each departure, I had to reframe how I was internalizing the meaning of his tears. I reminded myself that if he wasn’t crying, something was wrong. My son, who was 15-months old when he and I began our separate journey together, cried his little heart out when I would leave his daycare after I would show up before work just to spend 30-minutes with him where I would feed him breakfast. I would hear his yells after leaving his daycare in the afternoon when I would show up after work just to pull him through the neighborhood in a wagon so we could sit on the corner and wave at passengers on each passing bus. And I knew he cried from a place of longing. He cried from a place of love. And his cries were always matched by my tears as I sat in the car trying to remind myself that this situation would pass.
When I look back on that emotionally taxing time in our lives, I can appreciate the beauty in the pain. We cried because the effort I put into making our short unscheduled time together possible served as our reminder that father and son need each other. I knew it would have been easy to do nothing because my son would not remember me whether I show up or not. But just as I remembered what I deserved from my father, my heart knew what my son deserved as well. My entire being focused on showing my son how love is a verb. As a result, the bond between my son and myself is undeniable and continues to grow stronger and stronger.
So it is from this perspective that I write. I write for fathers who are searching for hope. I write for those fathers who need that reminder to stay mission-focused. I write for those fathers because I understand the pain of having to fight for your child. I write to show fathers what is possible when they walk confidently into the unknown and assume their rightful place in the life of their child. I write because we are not second-class parents. I write to remind you of your worth in a world that wants to remind you that you are a weekend father. A Disneyland father. I write to challenge the world because I truly know fathers matter. I write from the place of a child who longed for his father because to that child his father was his world. I write to share with you my world – a place where my son is my world and I am his world.
