August 1 2023
My boys will either stay with me, leave me, or reject me. They will do all three at various times, sometimes simultaneously, but ultimately they will choose one of those paths. I can’t speak to the feminine, and the ways I think about a boy staying with/leaving/rejecting his mother are difficult to articulate (and difficult for me to consciously enact) as my mom died when I was a boy. It wasn’t until my late 20s when I started to consider the fact that I still walk those paths as an adult even though she was absent after I was 12 years old.
Oooof that’s something real and heavy right there. Started off sharp didn’t we. Ok let’s take a quick break with a dad joke.
How do you know a joke is a dad joke?
It’s apparent.
Boom. I’m 40.
So my boys have these paths: stay, leave, reject. I have the same for my father. Sometimes I am aware of which path I’m walking, sometimes I am not, especially when I am on the path of staying and clinging. On that path I am 12 again. You know how when you go back to your hometown to visit your parents, and right when you walk through the front door you’re in an instant emotionally a child again? And you don’t realize it until after you’ve left their house driving back towards yours? Or maybe 10 years later?
I know the path I want my boys to plow: they will need to leave me. Not yet, though. Right now they are building up their healthy egos, strengthening their foundations. But, even at 8 years old, I can see it starting to happen with my oldest boy.
We went to the trampoline park, one of those warehouses that is nearly wall-to-wall trampolines and dad injuries, dads like me who think, “I could do a flip when I was 15. Surely I can at 40.” We’re all so dumb.
We’ve gone to these trampoline parks since they were old enough to jump. It’s fun. The boys are getting more adventurous with their jumps and I move in the opposite direction, which means I jump up and down in a stiff motion, sometimes daring to bounce on my butt then back up to my feet. That’s all I’ve got anymore. I can’t afford to miss work because I broke my arm showing off to, let’s face it, other parents.
I noticed on the most recent trip to the trampoline park that Waits, who is 8, went off by himself much more than usual, and he didn’t shout “Dad! Watch this!” nearly as much as I wanted him to. Murphy, who is 5, stayed close to me in general, always checking over his shoulder to see where I was and to see if I was watching his moves.
Waits has entered into a new stage of leaving. He needs me less. It broke my heart and also I am thrilled for him.
I don’t yet know what leaving will look like for them as teenagers or adults, but I do know that part of my father work is to prepare them to leave with the best foundation possible, to develop their wildness while also being their to hold them, make their food, buy their clothes, and constantly say no you can’t have your own phone you dumbdumb child.
Will they reject me? Absolutely, and it will hurt. Will they move close to me and try to stay in the safety of their childhood container? Again, yes. But my hope is that, when it’s time, they will leave well, with all of the blessing I have to give, to become their own men. They can develop only so much under my eye — and so much development will happen under the eyes of others and in the embrace of the earth.
Just not yet. Not yet boys. I’ve still got more time with you and I will soak up every second I can.
Except when they’re assholes. That’s when they can go to their mother’s.