When it rains it pours.
My mom has been back in the hospital, with pneumonia, and has just left another scary stint in ICU. She’s doing better, but still is not out of the woods. Along with that, Richelle has been sick with a stomach thing that’s been bugging her, work is still going 200%, and there was some must-do tasks to take care of with Philly Future. With all this going on I missed blogphiladelphia and a friend’s party I really wanted to make it too 🙁
Whadda week.
I’ll leave you with a quote, an excerpt from Jeff Gammage’s new book “China Ghosts”: Becoming her father:
The lack of control is terrifying. Maybe that’s why parents reduce the experience to banalities. They grow up so fast. You turn around and they’re grown. Where does the time go? Then again, the cliches are cliches because they’re true.
Already I can feel Jin Yu moving forward – and away. I hear the clock ticking. I notice the continuous, minute changes in her looks and size and demeanor. Some days I almost want to shout, Don’t go! Please, don’t go. Don’t leave. Stay here. Stay my little girl, my baby, my darling. Stay the child who adores me always, the one who on Monday mornings wraps her arms around my legs and shouts, “Dading no go work!” And who, eight hours later, jumps into my arms and kisses me as if I’d been gone for a month.
My fatherhood will be too short. That I know. How long before she is off with her friends? Seven years? Eight? Ten at the most.
Still, being a father has already delivered more laughter than anyone has a right to enjoy, and greater satisfaction than anyone has a right to expect. It has taught me – forced me – to become my better, stronger self. And left me in fear that, on too many days, I have not been the person I’d hoped to be, but the one who is too tired, irritable and removed. The person who fails to understand that every day with Jin Yu is a gift, that these moments and days will pass like a summer wind. That too soon I’ll be waving goodbye to my grown-up girl and wondering how it all went so quickly.
In my twenties I was lucky to observe two terrific dads – my wife’s, and my brother. But that was my twenties, growing up I had zero male role models. I didn’t have a dad, and I can only recall one male school teacher (Lawton Elementary sixth grade teacher, Mr. Crell) who had an impact on my upbringing in a positive way. As a teenager, my peers spoke of any possibility of becoming a father with derision and fear. If I knew someone who had a dad, he or she wasn’t happy about it.
I had to learn about fatherhood through entertainment media. Older stuff like “Happy Days” and “The Brady Bunch” seemed out of whack with reality. Most entertainment of my era (the 80s) presented fathers as the dumb or broken players in any family (“Married With Children” anybody?). Shit, take a look at any entertainment media of today. Is it any different?
I’m lucky I had Mr. Rogers when I did, before I grew into the hard, cynical teenager I was.
Cynicism that’s been wearing away from me as I get older. A process that’s speed up considerably as I’ve been blessed with fatherhood. With Emma.
I thought I knew so much. I thought I had felt all there is to feel.
And then I saw her face. And held her in my arms. And heard her laugh. And heard her say “daddy”. And watched her hug her mommy. And watched her crawl for the first time. And saw her stand up and take her first steps. And cringed when she fell on her face, and looked for our reaction (which we shifted very, very fast to supporting), and smiled and got back up. And heard her yell when her grandpop and grandmom visit. And saw her snuggle with her Elmo and Philly Phanatic dolls. And watched her rip into her bookshelf, sit down in a pile of books, and paged through them one by one. And heard her laugh the hardest laugh you’ve ever heard when Zena was rolling over and running on by. And was able to look at my wife’s face, and share these moments with her.
So when Elmer Smith in the Daily News says we need to speak out about the joys of fatherhood, in the following, it sounds like truth to me.
…Plain truth is that most men have never learned to talk about being fathers. Somehow it always ends up sounding like signing up for the draft.
That’s a man thing. I’ve heard men who have been happily married for 30 years make it sound like they’re being held hostage. We rarely talk about our children the way mothers do.
Women talk about their children and it makes you think everybody ought to have one. Men make it sound like something that happens when you’re not careful.
It’s a tougher sell for a lot of young men today than it was for me. They see more baby’s daddies than custodial fathers. Marriage comes later, if at all.
The men I grew up around and paid attention to were all fathers. They were the most respected men in my world. If they showed up at a parent-teacher night at school, teachers couldn’t wait to talk with them.
By the time I became a man, I wanted to be a father. But I didn’t want it for my yet-to-be-born child. I wanted it for me.
We can tell that story. If we’re going to arrest a trend that threatens to destroy the fabric of life in our communities, we must tell that story.
Young men don’t just need to hear what’s going to happen to their children if they’re not there to raise them. They need to hear what it feels like to teach their sons how to ride a bike or catch a ball.
They need to know that no one, not even a mother, can make their daughters feel desirable and worthy of being loved the way they can.
They need to know there is nothing you can shoot up or snort up or rub on that can match the feeling you get when you see your child starting to walk like you or talk the way you do.
A lot of us have had moments like that, defining moments. That’s what we get out of being fathers.
Philadelphia Inquirer: Art Carey: Credit to Mom, mentors:
…The fire that incinerated the North Philadelphia rowhouse had begun in the basement, probably ignited by someone cooking crack. The house was inhabited at the time by Blakeley’s father, a man who had climbed high and fallen fast.
“My mother was very blunt,” Cooper remembers. “She said, ‘This is what drugs will do to you. You want to throw your life away? This is the end result.’ “
Cooper, then 5, was so impressed he made a vow: “I will be better than my father.”
In the years that followed, it became his mantra, especially in times of stress and discouragement. “It became the sole motivating force in all I did,” Cooper says.
Today, Cooper, 30, is a senior information technology engineer at Wyeth Pharmaceuticals in Frazer, Chester County. His job is to devise code that enables computer systems to talk to each other. In night school at Wharton, he’s taking business courses and he plans to pursue an MBA.
But it could all have turned out so differently.
“I grew up on the same streets where murders have occurred,” he says. “But I was able to steer clear of that because I had people who had my best interests at heart and were willing to show me another way.”
How Cooper traveled from where he came from to where he is now is a testament to his innate drive and motivation, to that amalgam of traits and values we call “character.” But, as Cooper readily admits, he benefited also from family – in his case, a determined and dedicated single mother, and a civic-minded elderly couple who mentored and supported him.
A powerful story.
Just wishing you all a great Valentine’s Day today and every day.
Lots to share, including photos from Emma’s first birthday party 🙂
Spammers have messed up this blog’s commenting functionality. Sooner or later I will upgrade to the latest and greatest Moveable Type – from what I hear things are much improved – but until then – apologies.
You’re not going to believe this, I’m still laughing at the irony, but last Thursday, while walking to the train station from my first physical rehabilitation session – I fell down six or steps – and chipped my right lateral cunieform – a bone on the top of my right foot!
It’s a small chip and my orthopedist said I should be safe to put weight on it, if I can handle the pain, which I can. But damn man. That’s just too friggin’ ironic.
On a far lighter note, we’re looking forward to Emma’s first birthday next month. Just a couple weeks away. We have a small house, so the party will be just family, but it will be a great day. I gotta post some new pictures. You should see her walking technique – it looks like a martial arts stance 🙂
She’s doing much better. Not at home yet, but getting stronger by the day.
I wrote a letter in my journal to Emma having to do with making sure you always share what you mean to share with your loved ones – or something as innocuous as lettuce may keep you from doing so some day!
At around 6:30 tonight they removed the tube and mom was breathing regularly under her own strength. It was scary along the way, with fears growing that it wouldn’t be possible.
I’ve been at the hospital the past few days, leaving Richelle alone to take care of Emma, who has a cold (snot everywhere!) which I’ve caught. So none of us have been sleeping well.
It was great to hear my mom’s gravely voice say to me, “see you tomorrow”, with a smile and a happy tear in her eye, when it was time for me to head home.
Last few days have been rough, but last night we had a real scare – my mom aspirated some lettuce and ended up almost dieing. Along the way she was intubated. This morning she’s in good spirits. No complications and tomorrow they should be weaning her from the breathing tube. A scary night.
To Susie Madrak, who said goodbye her father last weekend. Read her tribute to him. If you don’t know her, you are missing out on knowing a special, passionate soul. Her part in running the Norgs unconference was central to it being a success, in every way.
And to my friend Lynne, who lost her grandson this weekend.
My heart goes out to you.