Fatherhood and Death

What a depressing way to describe it! It makes it sound like fatherhood is the end of happiness, when I feel like it was the opposite: it was the beginning of real life for me. When Kate was born, everything in my life before her faded in significance. My timeline became B.K. and A.K.: Before Kate and After Kate. And After Kate was way, way better.

 

And yet, there is a kind of death.

I remember being . . . 11 or 12, and riding my bike outside, and coming inside and throwing myself on my bed and crying, for no reason that I could think of. And I remember when adolescence ended, or at least began to end – the exact day, I remember. I was in my first year of seminary, washing windows as a job, which made good money, but which I found terribly anxiety-producing (always worrying I’d knock over some display inside a store, or spill water on something, or not get my route done on time). Anyway, I was finishing my route for the day, and I thought, “Gee, this has been a tough day. What will I do tonight to reward myself?” And the thought came back: “Do my Hebrew homework. And go to bed.” And I didn’t resist it; I knew that that was going to be my “reward.” And something inside of me died and grew up, at the same time.

I was never bored in college. Ever. I was severely (and, looking back, needlessly) depressed some of the time, but never bored. Life flared open. I watched international cinema, transfixed. I agonized over philosophical ideas and arguments which I’ve long since forgotten. I remember finishing Dostoyevski’s Underground Man for the first time and standing on top of my chair in the library – a real “O Captain, My Captain” moment. I took long, vigorous walks at night through campus, through the light pooling on the path, through the sensuous shadows. Opposite of bored.

Now, I wouldn’t say I’m bored, but . . . I grade and clean up a lot. I answer emails a lot. I answer my kids endless questions about the nature of reality and tell them to wipe their nose. I tell my kids not to be bossy and argue with each other. A lot. I’d never go back, of course: in many ways, I was a child in college. Erin read me a passage once from one of her counseling books, to the effect that, when men become fathers, they spend most of their time doing things they’d never do as single men (changing diapers, taking their kids to the park, etc.), but that most men would never go back to singleness. I’m with them.

But there is a death. Instead of the self-investment of adolescence, the intense growth which usually happens with a painful level of self-consciousness, fatherhood forces the father to spend lots of energy one a child he loves, but doing things which aren’t inherently interesting. The love of the child becomes the only motive. It is a kind of death – a good death, which liberates and transforms.

This is the last stage of my life. The endless possibilities, the freshness, the excitement of discovery which made my college years, is over. My memories of that time feel a little like they happened to someone else. But in many ways, the last stage is the best. There is an odd clear-sightedness, a resolute-ness, a simplicity and concentration, which comes as earlier stages are left behind. I suppose it is God’s providence that the last stage of adult life is the longest: one has the most time to contemplate one’s ending. One is brought home to oneself in the most forceful way against the horizon of death, and also brought out of oneself as the kids interrupt my reading to ask me to play a game with them. And I say yes, because I will soon not be here to do so.