My grand Father's Day

This Father’s Day was kind of sad for the ladies in my life. Our family was missing two fathers. With Rachelle’s dad and grandpa both gone, and my brothers still trying to figure out how babies are made (or something like that) it left just my dad and me to get the royal Daddy treatment.

Neither Rachelle nor Evonne has a habit of tallying losses, but on a day like Father’s Day in a year as grief-ridden as this has been, it’s hard for the fatherless and the widow not to feel the irony.

These losses make me even more aware of how fortunate I am to have my dad. He lost his father when he was still in grade school. Naturally, he imagined he would follow suit.

As kids, we lived only half-resigned to the dread of Dad’s early death. We feared it but we knew it was coming. It was as real and as expected as other unavoidable certainties like swim workouts or going away to college.

But we dreaded this most of all.

And now, against all prophecies of doom, he has survived. By God’s grace, he is cashing social security checks, yelling at the Lakers, chasing the Four Freshmen around the country with Mom as they celebrate their 60^th anniversary (the Four Freshmen, that is), and working 80-hour weeks during tax season. (We still pray he’ll retire. Soon.)

Best of all, he is goofing off with my three little girlies. Listening with rapt attention as Melía tells about her prize snails and roly-polies. Making faces. Tickling his way down Ashlyn’s face saying, “Fore-bender, eye-winker, tom-tinker, nose-smeller, mouth-eater, chin-chopper, gully-gully-gully!” and cackling as raucously as she does. Playing hide-and-go-seek. Teaching Brielle how to cast with her new Barbie fishing pole (and dig that visual). Reading about Jesus calming the storm with real sound effects, the wind and waves rocking all four of them in the La-Z-Boy. (They eat this up as much as I did at their age.)

These are all things of beauty that I never imagined. Measures of soul music after movements of monotone. Breathtaking vistas out of miles of fog. They take me by surprise—as heaven will no doubt do when it comes in fullness—because I never dared to think of any of this. My vision was too short to see myself with children, much less with my dad around to enjoy them. It is unanticipated delight. Serendipity. An ambush of joy.

So thanks for sticking around, Big Dada. Life has often been tiring, and survival can be harder than its alternative. But we’re lucky you’re still with the program—despite your predictions.

“I’m wrong. I’m always wrong,” you have often lamented. You are far from always wrong. But I’m glad you were wrong on this one, Big Dada. Really glad.

We love you.

What we tell expectant fathers

"It's the end of the world as we know it. (And I feel fine.)" (R.E.M.)

Guys with kids have only a few hackneyed phrases to share with guys expecting them.

• "Life as you know it is about to end. But it's cool."
• "Remember how things are now, because they will never be like this again. But it's amazing."
• "It's a whole new world. But it's a good new world."
• "There's no going back to things as they have been. But you won't want to."
  

Other mutations are out there, but they all sound the same to the father-to-be. The message is somewhere between a warning of unknown terrors and a promise of unfathomable blessing. Usually the details that follow these phrases give you plenty of reasons to heed the warning. "I never knew I could get by on so little sleep." "Poop and pee pee will become regular parts of your vocabulary." Stories of heroic martyrdom for the cause of child-rearing.

The promise part is harder to buy.

Half of you suspects this seasoned dad is just tacking that niceness on to avoid sounding like a total downer. The guy doesn't want to scare you into abandoning the kid. Has his wife put him up to this bubbly baby talk?

The other half wonders what the heck he is talking about. The anecdotes of stench and self-sacrifice don't square with that prophecy of great joy. What sort of insanity leads a dude to think he's better off than before, now that he has to share his time, space and wife with a little needy creature? Can sleep deprivation do that kind of damage to a man's brain?

These warning-promises get to sounding trite, ringing as hollow as the words of an astronaut explaining zero-gravity to land-bound mortals, a bird telling fish about flight. They speak of something sounding suspiciously wonderful and utterly impossible--leaving you wary. As one in the presence of God, you feel fear and love, faith and disbelief, primal longing and terror.

And then you have the kid, and the mystery unfolds. The guy was right. You are as crazy as he was. You discuss poop over burritos and don't flinch. You've tabled agenda item "sleep" till sometime around retirement.

There's no going back. And you wouldn't want to.

Things are not anything like they used to be. And it is amazing.