I have been many things in my life, but my favorite has got to be being a dad. In 2011,
we were lucky enough to have our first daughter, Hannah, enter our world. It’s like you
spend nine months waiting for this baby to come, you head to the hospital for a blurry
48 hours, and then someone hands you this baby, and you’re like, ‘we get to keep her?’
In those two days, you go from living for yourself to suddenly being completely focused
on the well-being of someone else. And no matter how hard you’ve tried to tell yourself
you weren’t a complete selfish fool all your life, just one look at that little nugget, and
you compare the new you to that other person, you realize you, on some level, only
lived for yourself. This is not to say you’re somehow redeemed, because old selfishness
is hard to break, so this is definitely the work in progress of who I am.
A little over two years later, we were lucky enough to have our youngest daughter,
Sophie enter the world. And while a lot had not changed for me in who I was by the time
she joined us, having two daughters definitely gives you your girl dad papers (as
overused as that term may be). You fully rewire yourself to be focused on not just the
long-term goals and dreams of children, but the goals and dreams of little girls.
For the first six years as Dad, you’re definitely the favorite. And somehow you convince
yourself that’s always going to be the case…until somewhere around 2nd grade comes
Mommy. At that point, you realize you are both outclassed and sorely lacking to the
natural talents of the big ‘M’. My wife is an incredible mother and an incredible person
and as a female role model, I couldn’t ask for a better human being to knock me off my
perch. I still feel the unconditional love of my daughters, but as they say, Mom is truly
the name of God on the lips and mouths of all children.
By now, my daughters are both 13 and 11 years old, and I am very proud to say, in the
many hats I wear, including career guy, drinking buddy, and Gen-Xer, being a father is
by far the ultimate definition of who I am. Of course, I am still swimming upstream to
keep up with my wife, but at this point, I am not half terrible at this dad thing, which I
think, going back to where I started this intro, has helped me to be a better person. Still
not sure, I’m heaven material, but the ways I have changed definitely bought me a
never-ending supply of heavy metal music to listen to on the road through purgatory.
I initially started this blog when the girls were four and two years old, and quite a bit has
changed. But I am hoping to share these new adventures as the very centers of my
world go from the little girls who make me proud, to the young women who will do for
this world, what they have done for me.
