From the moment my wife and I discovered we were going to be parents, I knew that I was going to be a good dad. I knew it because I wasn't going to accept anything less from myself.
No. Matter. What.
It was a blissful moment where I understood my place on this planet was to fulfill the ancient and sacred role of the patriarch, and that I would stand between my family and any harm that comes and when, as inevitably it will, some of life's difficulty gets passed me to my wife or children I will know that they are strong enough to battle it themselves because I have spent all of my time with them working to empower them and help them become their most powerful selves!
But I am blessed for that, because I have worked hard at building that mindset. It is a daunting task, to be a father. Even before your child arrives in this world, it feels a lot like Gandalf must have felt standing on that narrow stone bridge before the Balrog, the weight of all that is hard and scary in this world bearing down on you with fiery fangs and burning eyes.
But like Gandalf, our purpose as fathers is greater than ourselves and we can draw strength from that! Also, like Gandalf, our most important role is not to defend our family, but to strengthen them and empower them so that they can defend themselves.
With that in mind, here is my first entry and an example of how this blog will be written, and how I hope to share enough positive examples of being a good father that the good father in all of you will resonate with some of what I share and shine brightly as a guiding beacon for your family:
Daddy WIN: Tackling the Truck Monster!
My daughter of 19 months shows very little fear in her, something I know will prove challenging for me in the future. For now, I love it and I encourage it. I hang back when she wanders in the store, just enough that I can get to her when she trips before she realizes it stings, but far enough away that she feels independent. When she falls, I don't gasp, I tell her she's fine and ask her to smile for me. It works, trust me on this - she can now biff with the best of them and comes up laughing!
The one thing she has been afraid of though is the sound of the garbage truck; that noisy beast that rumbles by every week and wakes her from her nap was terrifying her for weeks before it finally came to me what I should do.
The first thing I remembered was "baby steps". Toddlers love to learn and explore, but one little step at a time.
So, one day the garbage truck arrived and stopped in a particularly noisy area of our apartment complex. My daughter ran up to my wife (also her mom), scared just shy of panic by this monstrous noise outside that she was just sure was about to rip our roof off and devour us all - or whatever it is toddlers imagine when they are scared.
I scooped my baby girl up and said, "We're going to go outside and see something new!" She looked at me with wide baby girl eyes and said, "Outside?" I carried her outside to where we could see the garbage truck and stopped just shy of where she would start freaking out again, then pointed, saying over and over "Truck! BIG Truck!" Then I pointed to the truck driver and said, "That's the man that drives it." He waved (thanks to him for being a good sport) and I continued, "It's just a really big car, a BIG beep beep!"
The look of surprise and wonder was amazing and totally worth the five minutes it took to run my little girl outside and do this! I waved to the truck, feeling a little stupid but in a good way. "Say, 'hi truck'!" I said. "Hi, tuck!" was her response. As the garbage truck drove off, I waved some more and said, "Bye, truck!" To which she mimicked, "Bye tuck, BYE TUCK!!"
Now, when she hears the loud noise, she gets excited and tells whoever is nearest, "Tuck! Hi Tuck! Bye Tuck!"
It took five minutes of my time to be my daughter's hero and forever banish that shapeless monster from her mind, replacing it instead with the friendly image of our local garbage truck. That's all it really ever takes though, just a few minutes to get involved and make a difference, to show them that it's not so scary after all, to show them that they are stronger than they think. But it takes getting involved, setting aside the remote, the newspaper, the game controller, the cell phone or the laptop, to show them that they are strong and how they can be even stronger. That is priceless, and worth all the time in the world.
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