I am still getting used to the fact that my daughters are now full-fledged teenagers, and soon will be actual women. It has been hard for me to accept the fact that they are growing into young women, even though it apparently has been going on for quite some time now, right before my eyes. I suppose this is just another adjustment I need to make, and hopefully soon, before they are out of the house and living on their own in New York City, working for an ad agency and calling me up to meet them at Union Square Café so they can introduce me to their latest investment-banking boyfriends.
Being a father was so much more, well, easy I guess is the word, when they were little. When my daughters were young I had much greater confidence in my fathering abilities. I knew I was a good dad, plain and simple. Not to sound arrogant or presumptuous, but it somehow seemed back then like being a father was more defined, more of a sure thing. I knew what to do.
There is a certain rhythm to parenting little children, even though you are mostly sleep-deprived and the house is always a mess and you barely have a minute to remember that you once had a vast expansive life all on your own. But I knew better what was expected of me then – especially how to talk to those little girls. They had their basic needs of course: food, bathing, sleep, a few toys and a TV; and then you had to make sure to keep them on the routines of bedtime and meal time and bath time and school time. The rest was filled in with playing and goofiness and adoration: tossing them into the air, holding their little hands as we walk through the park, carrying them on our strong shoulders, and tucking them into bed at night with a story and a prayer, placing their beloved stuffed animal just so.
And then there was the discipline – oh, how easy the discipline was when they were little! I was so powerful, with a full deck of disciplinary cards in my back pocket to hold over them, to keep them on good behavior. There was the time-out, the stern voice, the ability to swoop them up and physically re-direct them. And sure, they could scream and tantrum and embarrass you in the supermarket, but the bottom line was you were a lot bigger and you (hopefully) had a much stronger command of the English vocabulary, thus you knew you were pretty much in control of the situation. Plus they needed you.
Article comments
1 - The Crow
I enjoyed your article.
2 - Irene Wagner
Somebody's just set the bar pretty high for his future son-in-law.
And that's just how it's supposed to be. :)
Happy Father's Day.