The DadMan Chronicles: A true father

In a recent survey meticulously formulated and methodically conducted by myself, I recently discovered that the Top 5 Toughest Jobs for American Men* are:

1. Navy SEAL/Army Ranger-Mountain Division
2. Fatherhood
3. Middle-school math teacher
4. Vice President of Ethics for Goldman Sachs
5. President of the United States

It should come as no surprise that Navy SEALS/Army Rangers-Mountain Division have the world’s toughest jobs. Their profession includes rigorous physical and mental training often followed by long periods of boredom punctuated by intense, gut-wrenching moments most of us will thankfully never have to know.

It should also be noted that originally, these brave men and women ranked in the second position of the Top 5 right beneath Body-And-Hair Double for Professional Egomaniac Donald Trump. But the SEALS and Army Rangers I happened to interview politely disagreed with their secondary positioning behind the muskrat-haired, pouty-lipped multi-millionaire and convinced me theirs was the toughest job. And, as you might expect, SEALs and Rangers can be very convincing. (Trump was soon discarded from this survey anyway for trying to buy the number one position from me for several million dollars, a comped six-night stay at any one of his casinos and a “date” — and you know what I mean, huh? Yeah, you know — with any of his sixteen ex-wives. Being a research pollster of integrity I found this kind of influence peddling disgusting and summarily rejected his putrid offer as I’m sure you would have.)

This being said, the SEALs and Army Rangers I talked with all agreed — as they held me by my ankles over the side of a canyon cliff with a good two, three-hundred foot drop — that the second toughest job on the planet was being a Father.

“Free-climbing a sheer rock wall with forty-pounds of gear knowing the enemy’s at the top and a bloody splat is at the bottom is easy compared to raising a kid in today’s world,” Master Sergeant Malcolm “Mal” Tisdale of the Rangers 4th Division said as he held me by my right ankle over the canyon cliff’s edge. “There’s just so much you have to pay attention to with young minds, young spirits.”

“Oh, man, that is so true,” Corporal John “Boomer” Klassinsky said holding both his tears and my left ankle. “I’ve done two tours in Afganistan and nothing scares me more than my little seven-year old daughter learning texting and Facebook.”

While MTV, Wikipedia, certain Hollywood actors and “gangsta” rappers may hold that being a father simply means being a biological contributor to someone who swore-up-and-down-on-a-stack-of-Gideon-Bibles she was on the pill, many other men and women see beyond this tequila and Ecstasy infused definition. They see the act of fathering as being much more than having the ability to combine genetic material resulting in yet another local, State and Federal statistic. They see it as a challenging commitment. A continuance—or perhaps a correction—of the past, and a promise to the future.

They see fatherhood as a reason to try — for the millionth time — to quit cigarettes.

They see it as a reason to (temporarily) put down the video game controller and pick up a few children’s books and maybe even memorize a few old Raffi songs to bring a modicum of comfort to those late night, early mornings when baby’s in the midst of teething pains.

And they see it as a good, necessary and unquestionable reason to readjust the compass headings of their ego’s wants and needs to a horizon once unimagined. A horizon that provides for their child’s life and helps to fulfill their child’s dreams.

What does it truly mean to be the father of a child?

It means finally, absolutely and with frightening clarity seeing your own mortality. It means knowing you’re on the clock and the clock’s ticking. It means knowing there’s no punching-in or punching-out of the task of being a father. It means knowing it’s a twenty-four/seven/three-sixty-five job right up until the first shovel full of dirt is thrown on your casket or the last of your ashes disappear on the ocean’s roiling surface.

It means struggling against all the cynical meaninglessness and harsh realities the world would blind and choke you with to understand and embrace those flashes of eternity and timeless promises you see every time when you look into your little girl’s eyes, your baby son’s smile.

Being a father — a true father — also means being able to sprint a good fifty yards while bent over at the waist and holding a sippy cup while chasing after a giggling two-year old who somehow got it into their head that your Phillips-head screw driver was a toy. It means holding on to your own lunch as you clean up your five-year old’s multi-colored Halloween-candy-and-excitement-overload vomit. It means being unafraid and undeterred as you alone seek out feminine hygiene products in the nearby grocery store at ten in the evening because your wife and teenaged daughters are doubled over at home, crying and threatening to kill each other because someone used mom’s last Tampon and “I swear it wasn’t me ‘cause your tampons are huge, old lady, need a belt tampons!” (Better hurry home, pal.)

A true father can quickly, calmly and succinctly lie to his child when explaining what a “car word” is and that the middle finger is raised at another driver as a signal of appreciation for the other driver’s exceptional skill behind the wheel. And “only daddy and other drivers can give the one-finger signal because we have special licenses, understand, honey?”

A good father on a true heading will concede to the fact that no matter how hard he tries over the years he will inadvertently imbue his child with fearsome phobias, prickly prejudices and squiggly-squirmy superstitions that will likely send their child to therapy during the course of their life. And the only hope here is that their learned and wise therapist will say, “Oh, heck—we can cure this with two, maybe three sessions! No big thing!” instead of, “I’m clearing May and half of April for you. And here. Take this. It’s my cell number when August rolls around. I’m writing you a script for Xanax. I think you’re gonna need lots of Xanax.”

All that I’ve said applies to you, the step-fathers who have for the insanity of love lit their hair on fire, jumped backwards off a cliff and married a woman with children not of his DNA. It applies to you, the gay and lesbian couples who have fought stereotypes, prejudices, false expectations and nullification of their humanity in order to provide a parentless child with a home filled with a love as true as the spinning of this world.

Being a true father is not about pursuing perfection in the task.

It’s about loving the task enough to know that in the end — at the very end of your days — your goal was always to become an empty vessel; one that provided enough mental, physical, spiritual nourishment for your child to become the adult you had once hoped to be.

Good luck, bucko.

*Survey has a margin of error equaling +/- 100%