When Father's Day comes around each year, depending on so many parallel factors in each instance, I routinely feel a mix of gratitude, remorse, surprise, disappointment, elation, pride, and subtle nausea.
Twenty years in, today is no exception. Yet, as was the case for the nineteenth year prior, the reasons and perspectives have changed.
I have made no secret that my entrance into fatherhood was pensive and uncertain. It was a relative concession to Linda's overwhelming need for a family, and it took me a while to work up the courage to see past my trepidation.
Interestingly enough, having spent time recently sorting through, gathering and reviewing our respective backgrounds, experiences and influences as children, the gap that was a fault line in our compatibility appears as a deep chasm upon closer inspection. As was the case in numerous other examples, our baselines shared commonalities. At the same time, our responses and choices as adults reveal ignorant optimism in parenting as the path to repair scars and cross-armed refusal to risk playing a role in continuing any dysfunction into a future generation.
My path through parenthood has been shaped by an increasing connection to my parent's respective life experiences that has never stopped expanding. My understanding of my father's and mother's influences and the circumstances that led to their roles as parents are as boundless as my own. And as dynamic over time, too. They changed. I changed. We changed. Dare I say I evolved at least to the point of anticipating that no matter what, I was up to the task and that it would be an opportunity to grow and experience something I would otherwise miss out on and regret decades later.
There are many moments I am proud of, and as many I would welcome a do-over on. I've missed opportunities to set good examples while setting others I hope they will aspire to live up to as they grow into adulthood, make friends, find love, and come into their own as parents. In time. Not yet, though. Please, not yet.
Nothing came out how I'd feared or expected. I would do it all over again, especially to have experienced the love and life having done so has given me. We have shared twenty formative years of life, including still processing that only 17 of those had their mother present. And I have strived to recognize every day since then as a consciously embraced gift of time. Of one more day.
One of the seemingly most challenging paths I have taken has been the most rewarding. It humbled me and taught me to this day, including the recognition that the unknown is nothing to fear. Outcomes don’t always align with desires or expectations. Yet, the adaptation and recognition of opportunity within obstacles is perhaps the most genuine experience of presence and "living your best life".