With Father’s Day on everyone's mind, I thought it appropriate to write about a father that I know very well.
I considered writing about my father, who passed away less than a year ago, but I recently wrote about him and I really wanted to focus on something happier. Plus, I knew writing about my own father would just make me miss him more than I already do. So I decided to write about my husband, someone who has spent the past six years being a pretty darn good dad.
When I first met him, he was a 24 years old, living in an apartment in his mom’s basement in Canada. He had horrible luck in love and didn’t foresee himself married or a parent in his future. He was at the point of giving up on love completely and was considering enlisting in the army because he felt like he had no better option.
Then I came along. We had been friends online for years and had decided to meet in person. I had a two-year-old at the time, and once his father left the picture, we decided to see what direction things went. It was an extremely long distance relationship, I was in Pennsylvania, and he was right outside of Montreal, Quebec in Canada. It was an 8-hour drive between us, and a border of two countries. It was difficult, but we made it work.
I remember the first time he met my son. I was nervous. What if my son was afraid of him? What if he didn’t like kids? What if he didn’t even really want kids? So many thoughts rushed through my mind as I drove from the airport where I had picked him up, towards home.
Turns out I didn’t really need to have those fears. They hit it off and were laughing and playing and having a blast before long. He took him outside and ran around with him and was just everything I had always wanted a father for my son to be. It amazed me and I set my fears aside. My son cried when we took him to the airport and I knew then that he had left an everlasting mark on my son’s heart and I couldn’t be happier.
I will tell you though that it was not like a fairy tale where he was instantly the perfect dad. No one is ever perfect at parenting, it’s a lot of trial and error and hoping for the best outcome possible. But he dove in, he didn’t hesitate. He was invested from the beginning. He wanted to learn about being a parent, and didn’t shy away from the lessons. When we were together he shared all the responsibility of parenting, as if my son had been his from the start.
A few years in we got married and he made the move down to the States to live with us. He experienced being a stay at home dad until he was able to legally work in the states, and the father and son relationship grew. They loved each other like a father and son and argued like them. He still had much to learn, but what matter was he was there and he was involved.
A few years later I got pregnant with son number two, my husband’s first biological child. This started a brand new and amazing journey in which I got to watch my husband grow even more as a parent. I got to see him hold his baby for the first time, and watch him with him from day one. Just like before, there was no hesitation to hold him, to care for him, to be his dad. He was there with me waking in the night to change diapers and see what I needed, and did what he could to be helpful.
It is now two years later, and in many ways he is still learning about being a father, and it’s not always an easy road, but you know what? He’s trying, every day he is there for our kids, trying his best and doing his best with them. I’ve been a mother for eight years now, and even I am still learning about being a parent. It’s a journey that you go on together as a family.
Every day is new and brings about new problems and challenges, and new adventures and memories. I am so fortunate that I found someone who is so invested in my sons’ lives. Someone who takes such interest in them and makes their lives a happier place. He is someone who is there for them, in good times and in bad times, in happy times and sad times. He’s there to love and to hug. He’s there for trips to the parks, and Cub Scout meetings.
He’s never missed a birthday or a Christmas morning. He’s proud to be a father to them, even on the absolute worst days, where the kids are running around like crazy and destroying the world. And at the end of it, my sons have an amazing person in their lives, who they happily call daddy.
