As I Contemplate Fatherhood

I continue to see things from a different angle in 2021.

As I keep saying, the 1-2 punch of Covid & Cancer has really impacted my brain. Which is a welcome miracle. Considering the fact that I have more dead brain cells than existing brain cells, it is good to know there is still some elasticity in there.

When Keith and Craig were young, I was pretty convinced that I was the Greatest Father in the History of Fatherhood. I took enormous joy from just being around them.

They saved me. During the day I was Unhappy Joe; when I got home from work I was Ecstatic Joe. We played in the yard, we talked, we played games at the kitchen table, I read to them at night, we watched TV, we had a PATS football ritual, we took awesome vacations at a place we rented up north for 10 years or so.

I never took any of this for granted. My relationship with my sons was sacred - I looked at them through eyes of wonder. They were miracles.

When they got older, left the house, started to successfully live their own lives, I began to see myself as not much of a Dad. Because I was unhappy with my life, I was vocal about it (relentlessly) - I felt I did not set much of an example for them.

I see things differently now. What I was doing was being human. That does not make me less of a Dad.

Struggling with life, struggling with myself, fighting my inner demons, trying to connect with the beauty of my inner uniqueness.

The one indisputable thing that Keith & Craig know without a shadow of a doubt is that I love them with everything that I got. My relationship with my sons is still sacred.

Tomorrow we are all going out to eat to celebrate Mothers Day & Fathers Day. And to celebrate this family. Carol and I are so excited.

We saw them a bit here and there during the pandemic - all of us defintely made the effort, and thank god for those get togethers. But tomorrow - tomorrow, man - we are all going to sit down together in a fine restaurant and eat and talk and laugh - fucking reconnect as humans, happy and comfortable in the knowledge that we are a very special family.

I will sit at that table as The Dad, so proud of my family. 

And proud of the kind of Dad that I am.