Lesson #67 - It Is Good To Be The Dad

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Welcome to "Transient Tuesdays"...I am glad that you decided to stop by! Have a seat, kick up your feet and enjoy this week's post from The Technical Parent. Joshua was my very first male follower (YAY!) and he always leaves some of the best comments! Recently, a friend of Joshua's lost their little angel to cancer. No parent should ever have to go through that kind of pain and no child should ever have to fight such a terrible disease. I hope his guest post today will show everyone that they should slow down and enjoy life a little bit more!

Originally this was going to be a list of sorts -- probably along the lines of my regularly scheduled Tuesday bit -- called "The Things We Lost As We Grew Older" which then morphed into "Things This Father Once Lost, But Has Found Again." Both of those ideas centered around things that I enjoyed as a child that were lost to me for a time, but made an appearance once I had kids, and really once The Girl (now 2.5 going on 13) was able to understand it. Basically these were things like Candyland and the simple act of coloring with crayons, or "Where the Sidewalk Ends" by Shel Silverstein, old school Disney movies, and jumping into a pile of leaves. The never-ending joy associated with a game of tag from our kitchen to her bedroom and back again ad nauseum. These are things I enjoyed as a kid and never in my wildest dreams would I have imagined that they would be so fun for me again, because I get to teach the joy of them to these two little beings.

So, what this started out being is not what I'm supplying today. In fact, I've had a few months to get this together and it's only now, a week before it's going up, that I'm finally doing more with it than the few notes I typed in all that time ago.

I make no secrets of the fact that I love being a parent. I also don't hide the fact that 10 years ago I was 19, getting ready to finish off my sophomore year in undergrad, single, and a whole host of other things. If my current self had appeared to my then self and told me that before I was 30 I would be married for eight years with two kids, a mortgage, daycare that cost more than the mortgage, and everything else I have going on right now, well it may be cliché, but I would have laughed in his face. And maybe offered him something to drink. Some people, I'm sure, imagine these things when they're 19 or even younger. Believe me, it was the furthest thing from my mind up until the moment I met her in the summer of 2000.

And so we arrive at today.

I remember with fond memories those things that once dominated my existence as a child and take great joy myself in doing them once again. It's not just the reminiscent quality of these things; it goes beyond that. It's that dad is the best jungle gym in the world because he's strong and can lift you and can flip you and can catch you. The bliss in the simplicity of repetition; of rolling or kicking a ball back and forth, back and forth.

These are new feelings. The overwhelming sense of je ne sais quoi...I can't describe the feeling, but it's real, and it's there; a thing in your brain and a physical pang to your heart when you look at your child and they look back at you. It's that look in their eyes when they see you again, and you know that you are the bulk of their entire existence; that to this little person you can do no wrong; that you are their world. It's real and I feel it. Every time that child walks up to me, hugs around the legs and says, without prompting or in response to my saying it first, "I love you soooo much."

It's pride, to be sure. It's love in its purest and most basic form. I hear this and I know, unequivocally and without hesitation, that it's good to be the dad.