A new story

Men can’t help but think that fathering children is a good thing; it’s nature; it’s the way our brains are built. And so, after the children are born, it’s only natural that men should think that being a father to them, for the rest of life, is a good thing, too, and should be joyous. We men are expected to cherish those monumental moments: the births, the graduations, the marriages. And we are expected to be proud and happy, and often we are. But just as often, we feel a twinge of regret. Regret, that we have not had a closer relationship with our own fathers. Regret, that we are not emotionally closer to our children. We think of all the child-parent activities we begged off from and feel shame for not having been the dads we could have been, or should have been.

Some dads seem so close to their kids. They are the weeping dads, the huggers, the ones who always seem to be with them or on the phone with them, in regular communication about the simplest things, long into the offspring’s adulthood. Sometimes, I envy their bonds, their mutual dependency, because it has always been different in our family.

I learned fatherhood from my father; he learned it from my grandfather, who learned it from his father. It goes back much farther than that, but I know the history back to the 19th century, which is when this story begins.
As always, I know how this story starts, but not exactly where it’s going or when it will end. Please feel free to comment about your own experiences with fatherhood. The comments are just as interesting as the story.
This one starts tomorrow. We’ll call it “Fathers.”