Socially Speaking

This post is a day late because we were traveling yesterday… but it was a family adventure with my son, so I’m claiming a mulligan.

Father’s Day gives many of us the chance to ponder our relationships with not only our fathers but our sons and daughters as well. If you and your father are like most fathers and sons, you have likely on occasion wondered what on earth you had in common beyond biology. (My dad and I, for various reasons, have had many occasions like this!) But my experience as a dad has shown me that there’s an awful lot more to fatherhood than biology — in fact, biology is the weakest link in the fatherhood chain, because it’s what you give a child after he’s born that counts — and it’s helped me see what my father has given me. It’s also given me an idea of what I want to give my son. So here’s a list of belated thank yous and new commitments for father’s day, inspired by my dad and my son.

Thank you, dad, for teaching me how to hit — and how to catch — a curve ball. Anthony, I promise to be as patient with you as you learn hockey. You didn’t choose my sport to fall in love with; you picked your own. But I will as enthusiastically share your love of your chosen sport as Grandpa did mine. I will never complain (in front of you, anyway!) about early ice times or the cost of your equipment; as long as you are practicing hard and loving to play, you’re in. I also promise to be at as many of your games as I can possibly attend; Grandpa taught me how proud it feels to play in front of your dad, and I want you to have that too.

Thank you, Dad, for letting my brother and I control the radio on family road trips, because as an adult I now know how annoying that is. Anthony, I promise that during our many family road trips, I will listen to XM Kids or classical instead of the 80s on 8 or Bluesville, because Grandpa did that for me even though it drove him crazy. I will never forget that we go on family adventures, in part, so that you’ll have memories to draw on as you plan vacations for your own kids.

Dad, thank you for the gift of my career — because you are a storyteller; you see the little things in every experience, and recount every tale you tell right down to the dialogue involved. Some of your stories might drive me crazy because they don’t seem to have a point… but I have everything I have because of you, because I inherited your eye for detail and human nature. Mom taught me how to write, Dad, but you taught me what to write about — and that’s what separates a great writer from the good ones.

Anthony, I promise to listen more carefully to and read more patiently all of your eight year old stories, with their fits and starts and misspellings and seeming-to-ramblings… because in those stories you are learning human nature and learning how to communicate, learning what you find interesting in this world, and all those things may inform you someday who you want to be. If I listen carefully enough, your stories have something to teach me, too. My dad taught me that.

Dad, thank you for emphasizing education as much as you did, and sacrificing all that you did in order for your kids to build the lives we have. By encouraging my brother and I to go to college, you ensured that we’d have less in common with you and have different world views, but you did it anyway, because that’s what dads do to make sure their kids have better lives. You did without or skipped things you wanted in order to make sure we would go to college, and I took it for granted when I was younger. No longer.

Anthony, I promise to value your education as much as Grandpa valued mine. I promise to have the same high expectations of you that Grandpa had of me — because I have learned from experience that when Dad believes in you and expects you to live up to your talents, you soon believe in yourself and start having high expectations for yourself. I promise to help you make the most of all the talent running around in your little head. And I promise that I will never resent all the toys and material things I’m going to do without in order to save the money that lets you go to whatever school you can earn your way into. It’s not about me, it’s about you. My dad taught me that.

And finally, Anthony, I promise to love you as unconditionally as my dad has loved me — even when you go onto your own life path and make your own choices and start confounding me as much as I’ve sometimes confounded Grandpa. You will always know, just as I have, that your dad loves you and will always be there if you need him. That’s something I learned from my dad; consider it his Father’s Day present to you. There’s one catch, though: you have to promise to someday pass this gift along from me to your kids. If I do my job right, you won’t ever even have to be reminded; it will just come naturally to you from the example I’ve set for you over the course of your life.

Thanks, Dad. And thanks, Anthony, for helping me understand what a great man my dad is.