ON THE OCCASION OF MY DAUGHTER’S 18TH BIRTHDAY

My daughter and I on our (semi) regular Saturday coffee shop vibe.

I’m feeling it. I feel it when I find it difficult to go to sleep, and then when I have trouble waking up and staying awake throughout the day. I feel it when it takes me longer to recover after a workout, when those kettlebells give me more trouble today, than they did the day before. I feel it when one more medication is added so I can maintain a baseline that hovers between not my optimum health, and not death. I feel it in my enlarged heart, the only inheritance my father gave me.I feel it when I open social media and find that another famous person, close to my age, has died and a little piece of my cultural self has died with them–like important books being removed from shelves. I feel it when another friend dies of a preventable disease. I feel it in the financial regret (and fear) I have because I didn’t  save enough for retirement–which I am getting closer and closer to–because I didn’t believe I’d live long enough to retire. 

I feel it most when I look at my daughter. 

I never wanted to be a father. I was too afraid.. My childhood was so chaotic and violent that I did not dare to believe that I had what it took to guide a child into a healthy life. My parents were functionally useless, so I never had personal examples of what healthy and loving parenting should look and feel like. I carried so much anger and sadness and hurt, and I didn’t want to put that energy on and into a child. I wanted to protect the child I thought I would never have.

Then I met my wife. 

All things being considered, we shouldn’t be together–and it most definitely shouldn’t work. And it almost didn’t, more than a few times. We each had our baggage (Hefty, not Louis), baggage that was seemingly incompatible. A project-born ostensibly parentless street-minded boy, with public television cultural dreams and desires meets a small town born and bred, science-minded orphaned girl at a poetry reading. A recipe for, not precisely disaster, but not exactly a smooth ride. We had many conflicts, big and small, but we kept at it. Love or madness (is there really a difference?) forced us to do that work. Several years in, we got that call. My wife’s doctor told her something that I pretended to be happy about: she was pregnant. 

I was in shock. 

I wanted to be happy, but fear curled in my gut and sat there–not bothering to pay rent–a squatter who took up more space than I could imagine. I pantomimed being happy–and a part of me was. A parent? Me? But what did I know about being a father? My father was more myth than progenitor. My mother was a creative abuser, and when she wasn’t trying to find new ways to hurt me, she neglected me. My grandfather, Roy, and my uncle, Maurice, were both dead. Two of the men I respected the most, I’d never be able to have their counsel. 

No compass. No map. Uncharted territory. 

When this beautiful girl was born, I had so many conflicting emotions that I cried. I cried, initially not out of happiness, but out of confusion and fear and worry. I am very skilled at worrying about the future, and the past, and the present. I am the final boss of ruminators. What was I going to do with this new life? This new life that was wholly dependent on my wife and I–for everything? I could barely keep a marriage going, how was I going to keep an utterly helpless human alive? Not only keep them alive, but help them to thrive, to be better than I was in that moment, in all my moments? 

But we did it. I did it. 

There were times, too many times, where I wasn’t the best father nor husband. I was short, untrusting, easily frustrated and wanted an unrealistic fantasy and not the beautiful reality I was living. Marriage and fatherhood felt like I was wearing the wrong set of clothing, with too tight shoes, walking in an unfamiliar alley, with no aim or purpose. 

I allowed all of the things that had happened to me, the things that I witnessed, the unkindnesses and horrors, to write the script of my presence, in my family. I was on trauma autopilot and despite my wanting to break negative familial cycles, I (most likely) reinscribed them with my particular type of calligraphy–probably added a new cycle, or two. I was a wreck. I had mastered being the provider. I’m a worker.  Even now, there are few people who can outwork me. I can and will put in the hours. This was one thing I had almost full control over.  But turning off that part of me, that nose to the grindstone energy, I couldn’t think of anything more frightening, more disorienting. Who would I be If I wasn’t trying to simultaneously suppress and run from the years of trauma I had pent up inside? Who would I be if I actually stopped to feel the moment, instead of ruthlesslessly looking towards new horizons? 

But stop, I did. 

I did my own therapy. My wife and I did therapy together. Even if we weren’t going to be together, we had to work out our shit so the only thing we wouldn’t pass down to our daughter would be our dysfunction. The work was hard, but necessary. Knots of fear popped up throughout my body when the therapy seemed to be telling us that we shouldn’t be together. That there was too much damage between us to even attempt to repair. Maybe we’d just reach a point where we could separate without it being explosive? Maybe maintain a friendship? Be fantastic co-parents? 

But something happened. 

We got better. I got better (not perfect, but better. Still trying, every day). We put in that work. I put in that work. I was holding on to so much stuff, stuff that I felt made me who I was, but that was the question, wasn’t it? Who would I be, who could I become, if I didn’t have all that rotten and festering shit inside of me? How much easier could I move without all of that restricting my progress? How much better of a husband would I be? What kind of father could I be? The archeology of the self is a painful, but necessary process. I wish I could attribute my change to some kind of giant cosmic intervention–some sort of complex therapeutic intervention. But, no. 

I grieved. 

I grieved for the child in me who wasn’t loved by their parents. I grieved for the child in me who saw and experienced more violence than affection. I grieved for the kid who saw more dead bodies than most. I grieved for all of the friends that I lost–I had (and kind of still do) have survivor’s guilt. I grieved for not being able to instantly be a good husband and father. I grieved for how much pressure I put on myself to be all things to all people, but never included myself in ‘all people.’ I grieved for prioritizing the function of being a man (provider, protector) and not the presence of one (kindness, gentleness,, affection). 

I grieved, forgave myself, and let all that shit go. 

I won’t say the changes were instantaneous, but they were noticeable. My wife and I spent more worthy time together–not just being together for the sake of the illusion of a decent marriage, but cuddling and laughing and lunching and farmer’s marketing. My daughter and I became closer. We went out, by ourselves, without her mother acting as a buffer. Our home filled up with near-constant laughter, every day. We went out as a family, having the best time. But the big thing, the thing that made me realize that everything was heading in the right direction, was when my daughter remixed our relationship. 

My daughter started asking for my counsel. 

It started with her asking broad philosophical questions. Then these questions became personalized. She was giving me explicit invitations to enter her world. When your child does this, it is a crucial moment–it is so easy to fuck it up and have them cut you off. This ontological invitation, this permission to see the world through her eyes fundamentally changed who I am as a person. I did my best not to offer advice. Never in my life had I pulled so hard on my BA in Philosophy so I could fashion questions and scenarios that were both valuable and egoless. I worked hard as hell to decenter myself, not to fall into the ego trap of Ha! She wants my help! See? I am worthy! I am dad! I felt the shift from side-eyed authority figure to trusted confidant. 

I have never been so grateful in my life. Gratitude has become my default setting within my family.

I did grieve the ruptures that my daughter and I had. I do grieve for them. But they no longer impede my progress or act as barbed wire between her and I. I have ratcheted down my rumination and self-flaggelation. These ruptures have been transmuted into lessons of what not to repeat. Things that have happened, but have little impact on the future we are building together. And we’re heading into this future and mach 5. 

I am writing this one day before my daughter’s 18th birthday. 

It’s not like I think turning 18 confers some kind of magical cloak of maturity. I don’t believe she will instantly become an adult. However, over the past half year we’ve traveled the U.S., and internationally to look at universities. In just a few short months, my daughter will attend university. She will be writing the first chapter of her new life–but we’re geeky, so she’ll be illustrating the first panel of her graphic novel. We will not see each other every day. A key piece of our small but mighty family will not be there. Of course we’ll communicate, but that comfortable and loving rhythm will be disrupted. Possibly forever. Yes, I know we’ll create a new rhythm. My wife and I will have more time and space to reconnect, to rediscover each other. I am looking forward to that. 

But I am going to miss my baby.

I hope our healing carries her forward into her best possible life. I hope the lessons will give her comfort and strength and resolve and bravery. I hope she comes home and asks me a question so deep that we have to go out for boba and let the hours fall away as we discuss it. I want her to know that I am healing, mostly healed, and our relationship has been instrumental to this. But most of all I want her to know, in her heart, that no matter where I am, I am there for her. I want her to be confident that she can rely on me for the rest of my life. 

I want her to know, need her to know, that I am her dad and I love her.

I am feeling it. The impending loss. The reduction of laughter, in the near future. I’m dreading the empty nest. No more school plays. Hell, I’m even going to miss having to hold my daughter’s teachers accountable for their shit pedagogy. This is all present and true, but most of all, I am feeling wave upon wave of gratitude. I feel grateful that my wife and I got our stuff together and how this has buoyed our daughter. I feel grateful that we’ve raised her brave enough to want to venture away from home to go to uni. I feel that my grief and mourning has finally become empowering, not debilitating. 

I feel the most grateful that my daughter, our daughter, is the spectacular human she is. I feel grateful that she knows who she is, and isn’t shy about leaning into her full powers and prowess. I feel grateful that I have never been responsible for clipping her wings, but have always encouraged her to fly–even if I wasn’t terribly gentle in my instruction. But if I had to boil all this down, I feel that the first 18 years of my daughter’s life are years she can look back on and know, without any equivocation, that I did all I could for her to move into her future, without my past being the barrier. 

Live your life, my heart. Make your own mistakes. Avoid my mostly crooked footsteps. But most of all, understand that I am who I am now, because of my relationship with you. 

Here’s to 18.