Happy Father's Day, Dad

In honor of Father's Day, I asked writer Joel Rose to share his thoughts on fatherhood. Thank you, Joel.

By Joel Rose

My father worked nights. A 4 p.m. to 4 a.m. shift. I woke at 5 to be with him. He always brought home the newspapers, the New York Daily News, the Mirror, and a bag of jelly doughnuts. We sat at the kitchen table looking at the box scores and talking sports, me just being with my dad, us being together. He called me "Boy."

By the time I came home from school, he was gone.

I still get up at 5. I make coffee, go to my desk and work. Once my boys get up, I'm theirs. I follow them into the kitchen and make them breakfast. While they're eating. I make their lunch. I give them their vitamins and a glass of water, pick out their school clothes, and get them dressed. I put the little one's socks on, and double-knot his zebra-striped sneakers.

My wife takes them to school. I pick them up.

I am not the only father at the school gate. The boys and I walk the 12 blocks home unless the weather is totally intolerable. Then we take the subway. I keep constant vigil. Don't let them near the tracks, shepherd them close to the tiled wall, remind them to mind the gap between the subway car and the platform. I feel like an animal in the wild, shielding his cubs from dangers in the jungle. My boys call me "Papa."

At home, they generally gravitate toward meerkat chatlines and Webkin play stations on the computer. The little one will draw, sometimes for hours on end. Once their mother comes home, they run to her. Having been at the office all day, she is tired, but her attention is all on them.

I have generally made dinner. We sit down and eat together. The boys do their homework. Karen ushers them to bed. Oftentimes, from our bedroom next door down the hall, I listen to the murmur of the boys' and their mother's voices.

Sometimes on the way home the boys and I run errands. One afternoon, after school, straggling back to our apartment, we stopped at the drugstore. The pharmacist, Harvey, looking at the boys, said to me in all innocence, "You're Mr. Mom, aren't you?"

I felt vaguely insulted. I'm not Mr. Mom. That's not how I look at myself. The boys have a mother. A wonderful mother. Circumstance dictates she works outside the home, I work in the home. We are parents together. I'm a father.

The world looks at a father who participates fifty-fifty in his child's upbringing as a hero. But I don't think of myself as a hero. I think of myself as privileged. I am privileged to be a father participating in my children's lives.

My father passed away 10 years ago. He never got to meet his grandsons. The loss is his, the loss is theirs, the loss is mine. Happy Father's Day, Dad. I miss you. Happy Father's Day to all.

Joel Rose's new novel is The Blackest Bird. He is also the author of a recent Marie Claire article, Why I Love My Alpha Wife. He lives in New York City with his family.

By Leslie Morgan Steiner |  June 15, 2007; 7:00 AM ET  | Category:  Dads
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