The most minor of tasks as a father were once completely painstaking and often avoided by me. I tried to creatively come up with excuses to avoid doing what should have come naturally to me as a dad, as a husband, etc… We need to go food shopping, but we’ll do it tomorrow because it’s raining. We should go to the park or something, you know, get the kids out of the house, eh, I need to go help my cousin at his house instead. And you can forget about doing laundry before it was ceiling high, or cleaning the bathroom before it looked like that scene in “Trainspotting”. But the worst part was, the thing I didn’t realize and never truly understood until someone helped me discover how full of self seeking, selfish, fear driven motives I was, was that I deprived my son of time. He didn’t need the XBox that was pawned, the Wii that was pawned, the money I made that ended up in my polluted blood stream, no, he needed time. He needed and still needs some quality time with his daddy.
Now, I am by no means setting the world on fire financially, the truth is, if it wasn’t for my mother, I wouldn’t be able to be doing any of this right now. And you know what? It’s ok. I don’t need to pretend I’m something I’m not anymore. I also don’t need to buy things to make my baby happy. Of course he would love to be playing xbox right now, but more than that he enjoys drawing with me. Showing me every new pencil mark he puts on paper because “Daddy, look at this. This guy’s arrows have ice on them, and when he shoots them, Daddy, it freezes the guy all up.” He would rather play with toys with me rather then park himself in front of the tv (which by the way was my stand by baby sitter before).
He said something to me the other day that warmed me up inside. He said “Daddy, I bet other kid’s daddies aren’t like you.” In my head I was thinking (Yes, I’m sure they’re not, they probably have a 401K and benefits) but I was intrigued and asked why. He responded “Well Daddy, I bet other daddies don’t go and play the games we play, like when we pretend we’re secret agents Daddy. I bet you’re the only Daddy like that.” It’s comments like that, that have me hide my watering eyes. I have a natural ability to be a kid at heart. I’ve been told I’ve always been like that. This is a good thing today.
This morning my son climbed into my bed, I was cleaning up a bit and saw I had left a glass of water next to my bed with about an inch of water in it. He was sitting right next to it. Now before I got sober, that water would’ve been used to fill a syringe, or would’ve been kicked over on the floor and forgotten about, but I just calmly asked him to hand it to me. “Daddy be careful, it still has a little bit of water in there.” I gave him a puzzled look, “Are you sure? I don’t think it does.” He handed it to me proudly, “See Daddy, it does.” I quickly snatched it, inspected it, and flung the remaining water right back on him while he was sitting on my bed. “OH MY GOSH DADDY!!!! WHAT THE HECK????” We both fell over laughing. I mean we were dying! To think that I could throw water on him, while he was in my bed, HA! It was just too much. It started our day properly.
I’m not going to miss these opportunities ever again. He is my best friend, and I his. And yes, I maybe go too far with the kid stuff, but he seems to know when I’m being serious. And can I just say, that when my son laughs, I mean when he really laughs from his guts, when that smile takes up his whole face, his eyes close, then he reaches out to me motioning for a hug….The world stands still. It’s absolute magic.