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Excerpt

Excerpt

When I First Held You

My first winter alone with a not-yet-walking baby drove me stir-crazy, especially when frigid temperatures kept me housebound. I longed for company, specifically another stay-at-home dad who might be going through a similar experience, yet I wasn’t sure I wanted to meet the kind of guy who would cop to the title even if I spotted one. (Like many parents, I bristled at the term “stay-at-home” because it boiled my entire identity down to parenthood.) What would we talk about? Bottle feeding and diaper changing?

It turned out, of course, that other dads were out there, though these lone wolves largely kept to themselves on the playground, eschewing the packs of nannies and mommies. Maybe, being men, we’re of a more solitary nature about our parenting because paradigms of engaged, active fathers are hard to find, or because men, encouraged to be strong, brave, and authoritative, find themselves shy or uncomfortable discussing the intensely emotional world of parenting, a place where our sense of control can be illusionary. Perhaps men of a certain age are wary of making friends with one another in general, or these guys shared my fear of having dad buddies who would only want to talk baby. But I knew dads were out there, in greater numbers than ever, in fact. The census bureau estimates that the number of men acting as primary caregivers has more than doubled in the past ten years. And surely the amount will continue to grow in the next decade as the assumption that men belong solely in the workplace and women at home recedes in our cultural rearview mirror.

As I met other dads, both working and stay-at-home, I found that many men had struggled with inhibitions and anxiety around having kids—only the specifics of my story were unique, not the sentiment. I learned that the majority, like me, discovered fatherhood to be both a transformative space and also one thick with dark matter. I’m not talking about in the abstract—the societal stereotypes I touched on already—I mean on the ground, in the nursery, and especially on the changing table. Seeing your children’s growth up close and observing their personalities spring forth in fits and bursts, with new traits emerging almost overnight, as if all this time these little beings harbored much older, more developed selves within, is akin to a miracle. I remember the first time Felix smiled at his own reflection, the first conversation we had (in which, of course, he wanted to know when Mommy would be home), and the first time he said good-bye and walked off to class on his own, a self-proclaimed big boy. Hugging your child, smelling his or her scalp, might raise the hairs on the back of your neck and cause a pleasant lightheadedness, a buzz not unlike the one you experienced during the early, most innocent phases of a teenage love affair. Your kids will run to you in distress and cry for you at night, and you’ll feel not just loved but needed, truly important in their life. Even today, I frequently wake to find my little boy curled beside me in bed. “Can you put your arm around me, Daddy?” he’ll ask, knowing the answer will never be no.

This, however, is what we generally talk about when we talk about parenting—how it’s “wonderful” or “a wild ride!” We don’t discuss the manner in which the intense positive and negative impulses of paternity—of contemporary parenting at large—revolve around one another as electrons do protons, antithetical and yet concurrent. Parenting is challenging work because of what it requires physically and mentally, but also because of these constant contradictions. Alongside the day-to-day joys, you’ll find your attention span wrung out, your intellect understimulated.

Kids demand so much, especially when young. Patience will be lost and breaking points reached for both parent and child. Inevitably, every man asks himself, Am I a good father? Or a good enough father?

This anthology provides stories of men speaking with unflinching honesty about their experiences as fathers—full disclosure, no secrets or candy-coating. I turned to twenty-two of our most beloved and accomplished contemporary male writers to pen these essays, authors whose work I’ve reached for before when seeking both entertainment and something else, something more—nourishment, let’s call it. Grist for thought, octane for the spirit. Vital, primal stuff. A multitude of voices are included from men of different ages, with children at all stages of life. Apartments are made crowded by the addition of a baby, and then rooms go empty when children leave for college. Taken together, the essays create a nuanced mosaic of fatherhood, the darks and grays amid the highlights. No father’s story is simple, or monochromatic. But that’s life, isn’t it? Especially life with kids.

When I First Held You
by by Brian Gresko