My newborn son stared at me from across the gulf, stared at my unshaven face like he would burn every element of my features into his mind. His lips moved, mouthing empty syllables, silent as the sun.
I could see it in his eyes, that spark of waking intelligence, that strange magic that marks humans as the most powerful species on earth. That incredible hunger to understand, to express.
He licked toothless gums, tried to speak again. What would he say to me?
I tried to help him out. “Hi, dad,” I coaxed. He eyed me askance, perhaps seeing the bias in this suggestion. I repeated the words slowly, carefully, “Hi... dad,” and he breathed a guttural sigh, “Haaauhhh.” Maybe he was bored, but it sounded like hi.
It took my kids six months to say that key father-greeting phrase in full, not that I would make a special note of it or anything. Not that I sung sweet lullabies that were often made up of my name repeated, such as the “My Name is Dada” song, which goes like this: “My name is Dada, your name is Kevin, my name is Dada, and you’re little Kevin, Dadada, Dadada, and it’s little Kevin,” and more along those lines.
Hey, it has more depth than a pop song.
I also rewrote the scary part of “Rock-a-bye Baby” as follows: “When the bough breaks, the baby won’t fall, cause Daddy will catch him, and he’ll say lol.”
I am not letting my baby fall, no matter what boughs break around here. That’s one of my jobs as a daddy: preventing early bough-related accidents.
What else do I do? I stop for puddles. I sing in falsetto. I make wipeouts funny. I am ready to go for a walk right now. I’ll eat the half-chewed mushrooms. I’m ready to throw, catch or carry a variety of flailing people at a moment’s notice.
I get up every day wondering how to blow their minds and I go to sleep every night praying they won’t lie on my head.
I enforce rules and discuss consequences with the attempted fairness of a tired judge. I have no idea where they are hiding and I will eat their toes. I’ll tuck them in 20 times and let them run races across the bedsheets; and when yawns overtake us, I’ll hand the youngest to his mother and sing the eldest off to sleep.
This final song does not have any daddy lyrics at all. The tune is simply: “Goodnight, sleep tight, see you in the morning light,” sung softly and with about as much love as I can muster, and I can muster a lot.
Even bigger than the really big rock we threw in the ocean below our house, tweaking my back and putting five small crabs out of house and home. That splash was so big, but it has nothing on love.
So I sing the song, I turn out the light and walk down the stairs for the last stanza. Like many of you, my name is Daddy. I am not a superhero, but when my kids smile at me I sure feel like one.
I love them more and more each day, because as fast as they grow, my heart grows also.
I’m a dad. We became like this together.
