In one of your posts a few months back, you mentioned that one thingI will say this until I am blue in this face. One of the best things I got from my Dad as an adult was the notion that too many of us think of fatherhood as a responsibility and not an investment. It really gives so much back.
that an absentee father misses is reliving his childhood. Ever since
then, I've been doing just that with my five year old son. Yes, I'm
sure I'm doing it to make up for the fact that my Dad wasn't around
and recently died. But man, it was an absolute blast taking him to the
comic book store for the first time today. He's in a Batman phase
right now, which is a good place to start talking about right and
wrong, as well as how to kick serious ass.
Yesterday, I had an "After School Special" moment with the boy. Football season is over and he really wants to play hockey. But his swimming instructor wants him to try out for the local swim team. Time won't allow him to do both. He also was scared of swimming competitively, I think. Hockey is just more contact--he's gotten past that. Anyway, I basically told him it wasn't up for debate. Swimming isn't just a sport, but it's a life skill. If he does it for a season and hates it he doesn't have to go back.
Anyway, he sulked for like 15 minutes than came over and gave me hug. Then he said he knew that I always did what was best for him, even when he didn't agree. I was thinking, WTF is this Family Ties? Seriously, I never had that level of self-awareness at eight. Anyway, I think I did the right thing. The kid is eight and swims better than me.
And now, the great Ed O.G.
The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood 
My father wasn't around, and from a girl's perspective that has all types of different ramifications.
One of them is this ultimate feeling of disconnect with the notion that a man...read black man...could be a father to a child.
It has been wonderful to see my perceptions challenged, and my guard against children and loving-relationships being lifted.
Great post...thank you.
You made the right call. I'm a swimmer coming from a hockey family, and I've never regretted not playing hockey competitively. Hockey is more time consuming and expensive than you can imagine. Good skates aren't cheap, and pads can get pricey too. For growing kids, it can get expensive, and ice time is at a premium. Practice times can be at absurd hours (though this can be true of swim teams as well).
It's worth teaching him how to skate and handle a stick, but that's all he needs to be able to play pond hockey in the winter.
And the great thing about swimming competitively is that he'll be able to do it forever. There are masters teams with people who have been swimming 3 times a week for 30 years or more.
If he gets into swimming early, and he likes team sports, water polo is one of the toughest (and most fun) around. Anyway, my two cents.
Well said.
Being a father is a great way to enjoy once again all the great things about being a kid and yet still be a responsible adult.
Being a father is like having the best of gifts. You have to take care of it, but you get so much more than you put in.
echoing TW andrews, I swam competitively when I was younger and then got into waterpolo in h.s., and played a bit in college. I loved it. Both are great sports, and my god was I in good shape.
Holy shit that's adorable
That was funny but it also made me think about my current disdain for children. Perhaps the love of a child makes up for all the drama involved. I used to believe it but lately I just resent the whole idea. Women can be that way too.
Glad I wasn't drinking anything when I read this, cause I'm pretty sure I would have spit it out in laughter at the Family Ties line.
Man, I'm fired up you linked Ed OG. I used to bump this back when I was a junior in high school!
I'm a new father to a 3 month old daughter and I'll tell you: As she grows, so have I.
My dad's single mother sent him to their neighborhood pool here in Chicago when he was 11, where he learned to swim competitively, made a lot of new neighborhood friends, and found something to occupy his time as a latchkey kid. It was probably the best decision she ever made. And it gave him a chance to be around a lot of male peers and role models when he didn't have a dad.
I'm wanting to make a global warming joke about hockey vs. swimming, but can't quite pull it together.
For your correspondent whose son is going through a Batman phase, I heartily recommend the new Lego Batman game. The Lego video games are easy enough to be fun for young kids and parents both, and have really good team play.
LOL -- parenting. No offense to the childless, but that's what it's all about. (And yeah, no matter who you are, you HAVE to know how to swim. Knowing how to raise a kid, now...) It's not on the 'the older I get, the better I was' theme that lots of parents, dads especially, run on their kids in sports and such, but...
Do you know the Bill Russell's mom story?
(forgive me, Bill, if I get this wrong -- and who knows but you read TNC? -- it's YOUR story, but....)
Story goes that Bill Russell, the great Celtic, was naturally a very large child so he often wound up playing basketball with kids much older than he was. I think he was about 9 or 10, playing with 15 year olds, and they first pushed him around, and then beat him up -- so he ran home crying, like a little kid intimidated by older boys would.
Mrs. Russell put him in a car, and drove him back to the playground. They got out, and she marched him up to the 15 year olds who had beat Bill up, still there shooting around. She lined 'em up, and told her son: Now, you fight each of these guys, one at a time. They may beat you up -- but YOU WILL NOT RUN.
He did; they did; he didn't.
Dayum -- who among us wouldn't be not only scared of Mrs. Russell, not only motivated to never, ever disappoint her, but most of all, proud to be her kid?
This was great. I wish you could have taped that moment. :) far too often we hear about absent fathers, we rarely hear about the ones that are doing what they are supposed to. this just made me smile.
Passing up the chance to be a Hockey Dad shows how much you hate freedom.
Your kid is awesome. I came to the same realization that my parents were always looking out for my best interests when I was pretty young. It's a blessing to know that no matter what, there are two people who have your back.
My own "father made me learn to swim" story.
When I was about 8 or 9 my dad made me join a swim team. I hated it from the begginning. The team practiced at a high school in Baltimore-Lake Cliftonhe- that at the time had a pool where the heat didnt work probably half the time. And as you know it's a winter sport. Plus like your kid practices overlapped some other things that I would've much rather been doing...I complained every time we went to practice but he wouldn't let me quit. Finally we reached a compromise: If I won a race I could quit. For me it was game on after that. I wasn't particularly good at the time, but I busted my butt and within the month I was off of that squad. I'm still a pretty good swimmer to this day, and it was, at the very least, worth a few summers as lifeguard later on. I'm sure there was a life lesson in there somewhere, but in any event that's my story.
As a father with two kids 9 & 6 - and as a son whose dad left when he was 8, I can understand how you felt when your son hugged you. That feel will never be surpassed. Oh, and you made the right call on the life skill thing. (to say nothing of safety)
That's a great moment... thanks for sharing it. It reminded me of this PSA I saw on television last week... it was so cute, I had to find it on youtube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9A2Ap3DyvLg
Good choice. Even if he never swims competitively, it will save his life if he falls into deep water. I hear of a lot more kids who drown than I hear about kids who die because they couldn't play hockey.
As a DM, swimmer, and (adult) son - hey, good on you.
Swimming can be great fun if you've got a good team, and there's nothing better in the world for staying fit, but I have to tell you - the three-hour practices swimming back and forth on a closed circuit can get really repetitive and dull.
That said the learning part is fun and useful, and breaking out my badass fly form at social events never gets old.
My son's 2 1/2, so whadda I know, but: seems like the right choice. The reasoning certainly resonates with me.
If he sticks with both, it will also open up two different worlds for him. I played football and swam in HS. Aside from me, those were two non-overlapping groups of kids. Definitely broadened the people who I knew. Also, I was in damn good shape by springtime: pack on the muscle during the summer & football season, shed the fat in the pool.
Love the Ed OG joint, that album was on heavy rotation during my junior high years.
Being a former single-parented child, and getting a little older, I'm actually starting to get pangs for parenthood. but i'm an educated elite who's always wanted the two income not children lifestyle. Posts like this don't help
You made the right call on swimming vs. hockey. Not that hockey isn't good, but swimming has benefits no other sport has. In addition to the potentially life-saving skills, the cardiovascular benefits can save your ass later in life - and you can keep doing it almost forever without screwing up your joints. If you're a competitive swimmer, you can't mess around with smoking or drugs, because it will mess with your times. Swimmers work harder than anybody, and they know it, so they aren’t likely to be overly impressed with the jock-worship cult of football and b-ball players. Plus, nobody (at least among guys) looks better naked than a swimmer.
Best of all for the parents of a young swimmer: at the end of the day, they're clean, tired, and ready for bed.
I didn't know how to be a son until I became a father.
As a swimmer I was about to post something along the lines of how great swimming is, but most everything is pretty well covered here. The only thing I would add is that there are only a few teams that most of the better swimmers compete for; if you stay at it long enough and end up swimming in college then all the friends you swam with while you were younger end up going to other teams and suddenly you know all the swimmers in your part of the country. Swimmers usually come from pretty upper class, Mad Men watching families...so it's good for getting a career later.
Also, you get to meet some Olympians.
I have made some interesting observations about dads in the time since my siblings and i have all started families-- the main one is that dads find it hard to be involved until the kids are bigger, and let's face it, more interesting. When they are little infants, they are almost all work with little reward. The best reward you get at that time is being with them. if a dad is not with the mother at that time, then he misses out on the "being with" reward. But really, that time is critical for developing the "parent" vibe. You can't just waltz in when the kid is, say, 2 years old, and start to have a good time. It's not gonna happen easily, and then I think dads might give up. Also, if you don't hang out until the kid is 2, you are dealing with one pissed off mother. Those first two years are slave labor-- That mother is not gonna let dad get the fun with out the work as well.
My best advice to men-- stick with your women. If you do nothing else, be there to help and pick up and do dishes and run to the store and do the many, many loads of laundry and bring chocolate and smile and say "what a good job you are doing!" and "what a great kid!" and "he/she's fantastic!". Be at every single doctor appointment. Do this even if you don't like the mother very much. You can do this as a friend, you know, not only as a boyfriend/husband. Remember these important words-- "if mama ain't happy, ain't no one gonna be happy".
The most important part of parenting is being willing to spend the bulk of your time on the child, not on yourself. TNC's idea of "investment" is right.
@MPresto
It's only going to get better. Today was school picture day and my little girl was awake early and fired up to wear her dress uniform to school. There's something so infectious about the enthusiasm of a little kid that I got hyped about picture day too.
Everything I put into raising my child, I get back tenfold in love, wisdom, and patience.
Beautiful, Ta-Nehisi.
I am a father to two daughters, and although that means it's not an exact reliving of my youth (they like dolls, dressing up like princesses, etc.), something that has blown me away is that they love to read. I don't even have to convince them. They just pick up a book and are immersed. And it almost brings tears to my eyes, because when my Dad wasn't around, and when my Mom disappeared, and when my brothers treated me like shit, that's how I coped.
(Maybe this shouldn't matter or be left unsaid, but I'm white, just to let you know.)
So now I get the pleasure of reading with them the books that made life worth living when I was their age. That is a joy of fatherhood I never could have imagined.
aww... AWWWWW......
But no, you are blessed, man. Genuinely this is so sweet. Keep up the good parenting. A father who is strict but understanding is very important to a boy, very important - but you already knew that.
-sv
But keep your kid into hockey -- I hate going to hockey games and seeing the whiteness. At least when I go to Kings games, L.A. being what it is, it's a little brown. My sport could use a little more of what Nelson George used to call the black athletic aesthetic.
@DeliciousPundit:
Whiteness in hockey? I guess that's true - I grew up in North Dakota's premier hockey city - but have you ever been to a swim meet?
Thanks for this story. I am always amazed and gratified when, an hour after disciplining my kids, they tell me I am the best mom in the world. Somewhere deep inside, they know they need boundaries.
I really enjoy your blogging. Thanks for sharing your life with us.
>too many of us think of fatherhood as a responsibility and not an investment
A fucking *investment*????
How about a JOY?
Here's the question I want to ask every parent:
Has your kid hugged you today?
Thats a fine little man you and Kenyatta are raising Tah. Congrats as usual.
My theory on why dudes bail on their kids isn't responsibility vs. reward. I assume those cats (or women, to be fair) are psychologically expressing indifference, apathy or bitterness about their own futures. Children are a living breathing symbol of our future, but if folks dont put much stock, hope or faith in their futures, we cant be surprised when they dont put much stock, hope or faith in their children.