The Astonishing Privilege of Fatherhood
William Rivers Pitt. (Photo courtesy of WRP)
The Astonishing Privilege of Fatherhood
By William Rivers Pitt
Truthout |Op-Ed
Sunday 15 June 2014
It begins in the dawn's early light with a coo, or a thump, or "Ho jeez," or "A-duk-a-duk-a-duk-a-duk," or "Da da dee da dee da dah" coming out of the baby monitor that stands at attention on my dresser. You could run a freight train past my pillow, yank-start a chainsaw next to my head, or fire a 21-cannon salute through my bedroom wall at that hour, and odds are I'll sleep through it...but just one "Coo" out of that baby monitor, and I'm up like a thousand ants just crawled up my nose to do their own Budweiser commercial.
Scuttle-scuttle-scuttle out of the bedroom, open and close the door like a ninja, scuttle-scuttle-scuttle down the hall to the kitchen, upon which a banana is chosen. This is a solemn process, akin to Indiana Jones picking the proper cup at the end of "The Last Crusade." No bruises, not too big, not too small...and there it is, peeled, sliced and quartered into finger food, placed on a plate, with some finely-sliced peaches and pears riding shotgun. The peaches and pears are there mostly for color - they end up on the floor half the time - but the banana is the show. If there is no banana, there is no peace.
At this point, after all the necessary arrangements are laid, stealth is abandoned. Thump-thump-thump down the hallway to the nursery, heavy footfalls deliberately deployed to announce my onrushing presence, turn the corner, open the door...and there she is, standing at the rail of her crib, wide awake and smiling fit to split, bouncing on her mattress, "Ho jeez a-duk-a-duk-a-dahdee!" spilling from her face as I scoop her up for the first Epic Thermonuclear Totally Encompassing Hug of the day. I lay her down for our daily wrestling match regarding her diaper and outfit - I always win, but it's close and getting closer every time, and sometimes there is misdirected poo - before delivering her to breakfast, which she obliterates like a small, pink, giggling swarm of locusts.
These are my mornings. My mornings are tremendous.
She was born on April Fools' Day, making me the greatest April Fool of all time. She was also born on Opening Day for the Red Sox, and because my mind tends to work strangely, I remember that she came out of my wife and into this world just as David Ortiz stroked a liner to right field that gave the Sox an 8-4 lead, because the game was on a television bolted into the corner of the ceiling above the delivery bed. She was born, and the crowd went wild: that was quite literally the timing. Beat that with a stick.
(snip)
Mine is but one story in a galaxy of stories about fatherhood. Some have had it easier, some harder, and some hardest. I enjoy the privilege of presence, but there are piles of fathers out there who leave at dawn to return in the dark with raw hands and sore backs, who summon their children to them for a hug and a talk and a meal and a hand with homework, because that's the deal. Fatherhood is fatherhood. It's entirely binary: you either do it, or you don't.
I'm doing it to the very extremity of my ability. I hope you are, too, if you enjoy the astonishing privilege of fatherhood. That is all we can do.
Happy Father's Day, brothers. Enjoy it. We're back to work tomorrow.
The rest: http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/24360-william-rivers-pitt-the-astonishing-privilege-of-fatherhood
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To you and all the other Dad's out there. 
Thank you, I'm off to read this to hubby, he'll especially enjoy the baseball part. 
Neither daughter nor son ever turned a nose up at mashed bananas! It was the first baby jar food we tried on each of them. HUGE success. Mashed peas were soon to be another. And there was this mixed garden vegetable kind that was great, too. And soon enough, regular people food - in teeny-size bites and soft semi-mashed chunks. Soon enough yet again, they were off to the races, and anything they saw you eating, they wanted too. My son once built himself a beard worthy of Duck Dynasty and every al Qaeda suspect in Gitmo - while trying to consume a one-scoop chocolate ice cream cone - that he could barely hold steady. He gave himself a nice brown nose to go with that nice brown face. He made the whole ice cream parlor sprinkle with giggles.
During the last Olympics (summer, of course), we remembered when our little girl was mesmerized by the telecast of her first Olympics - and the gymnastics. Captivated! She began running in big circles around the room, shouting "I'm fantastic! Like the Olympics!" It's amazing what running in circles as fast as you can suddenly transforms you into! She was a speeding gazelle and a sprite out Mary Lou Rettoning any of 'em. At the same time! Just by running around in those circles!
Happy Father's Day Will. She made you what you are today! And one morning you'll wake up and shuffle off to the kitchen and look at those bananas and realize - your oldest is 25 and in command of some enterprise of her own, and your second oldest is off pursuing the dream of a lifetime and knocking it outta the ballpark. They'll be too busy to call on some days - except on Father's Day of course - but still, you'll just know, deep-down, that they're doing fine. Once it was about being able to walk without help. Now they do a whole lot more besides. One warning, though: there'll come a time when you're suddenly struck by the fact that you can't help them anymore. This one's totally on THEM. THEY have to make it work. And then you watch, helplessly but hopefully on the sidelines, and marvel slack-jawed and goose-bumped as they DO. That's when you know your job is done - even though, at the same time, it really never is! As we say around our house - "kinda, sorta, not really."
