Upside Down
[M]y son, who in addition to being this amazing, rambunctious little person, is allowing me to fit my own life better into a context of impermanent things, invest myself in his just started as opposed to my half-run race. But beyond all those organized thoughts I find fatherhood simply a mystery, a very concrete one I find sitting in my bed in front of me each morning, but one that hits me in some suddenly brand new way several times a day and has wrapped me into a kind of love and devotion completely different from anything I’ve ever experienced before and something I really wasn’t able to imagine or get close to beforehand.
I don’t like it when people project their own experiences into a template for other peoples lives. But speaking for myself I do not think I could feel complete as a person, fully accept this boundedness as a person, or fully know what it was to be one without the turned-upside-down experience I’m having as a father.
Josh Marshall, on being a father
I read this post early this morning, the day after my son got the Valentine’s Day card I sent him a week ago (that’s how long it takes for mail to get from Philadelphia to Montreal) and the day after we spoke briefly on Skype. Marshall and I are about the same age (I’m 37), and his kid’s a little more than half my son’s age.
Like Marshall, I don’t think my experience should be made “into a template for other peoples lives”, and I can attest to the “turned-upside-down experience I’m having as a father”, albeit for very different reasons.
When my friends with kids told me I wouldn’t understand what love meant until I had a child of my own, I honestly didn’t believe them. I’ve had my share of intimate love that you feel for your partner, and I love my best friends with all my heart. It would be difficult to describe the kind of love I have for my parents and family, even my sister who doesn’t speak to me and who permanently excised me from her life. It’s the kind of feeling I think we all take for granted until our mom or dad dies, and then the absence is just awful (and thankfully I haven’t experienced that particular ache yet, and hopefully won’t for a long, long time).
But the love I feel for my son is something of a very different nature, and his general physical absence from my life hangs over me like a black cloud more often than not. Seeing him on my computer screen, where it feels like I could reach out and touch him, is sometimes sheer torture, and his fleeting appearances in Philadelphia are tantalizing teasers of what could have been.
Unlike Josh, I never feel complete as a person anymore: that last piece is nearly 500 miles away, across an international border.
I’m not trying to bring anyone down, or to suggest I’m spiralling into self-pity (been there done that for a long time). I’m looking forward to some pretty serious rockin’ tonight, and in general life is good. But when I read columns like Marshall’s it’s impossible not to reflect on where I am today and how things aren’t as they should be.
I miss my son and wish he was here all the time. It hurts that he’s not. No amount of lip service, momentary on-line exchanges, or all-too-brief visits can change that.
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.
