The Long March into Significance: Becoming a Father

In six months I’ll be a new dad again, and my thoughts have returned to what kind of parent I think I’m becoming.  This is the fundamental question, more important to me than that of what kind of world we are bringing a new human into; we’re choosing to focus on what kind of human being will be visited upon our world.  And the logical follow-up question to “who is my child becoming,” is “what are we modeling?”  I’m intrigued as I meditate on this theme that I feel less equipped to parent than I did with the introduction of Gabriel, our almost-three year-old.  Maybe its because I grossly underestimated the task (or was it that I grossly overestimated my abilities?), but I feel like the advent of this fresh progeny I am more sober about what’s important, thus more involved in the introspective process of spiritual preparation for a child.  I’m sure the time will come when we’ll busy ourselves with paint swatches and name combinations and baby showers, etc., but I am thoroughly immersed at the moment in what it means to be a Dad.

Mark Scandrette, a local artist and spiritual director, writes in his blog about the importance of creating spaces for rites of passage to take place as he unpacks a recent experience with his own son who is in the process of becoming a man.  And the two realities cannot really be separated in a healthy way – these realities of fatherhood and manhood.  The father invests his very life, from genetic code to wise counsel to friendship and camaraderie, until the point at which the boy becomes a man and replaces him.  This transactions is strangely lacking in our youth-crazed world where men, like Peter Pan, refuse to mature into adulthood and experience all the relational and societal complications that result.

A friend of mine named David asked me today what kind of legacy I wish to impart on the next generation.  Immediately I think of my son and the mystery child on the way and ask myself if my legacy will be limited to the realm of good intentions, or if I will truly become the kind of man they will want to follow into significance.  In other words, can I live the kind of life that will help draw them into the fullness of their own potential?  I know some things, like that I want my son to be unashamed and secure in his sexuality.  I know I him to be secure enough that he doesn’t have to hide behind empty machismo or bullying tactics, but instead can invest his energy into a deep and authentic respect for self and others.  I want him to love his mom and treat women with equity and honor.  There’s a lot more that I am completely clueless about, like how to be vulnerable about my own broken humanness when he wakes up to the reality of my mortality.  Or what to do when my expectations get in the way of my ability to love and accept him.  Or a million other things that come with each new developmental stage or shift in circumstance.

This journey into parenthood is a long march into significance.  We don’t get a certificate and a plaque on the baby’s arrival; that legacy instead has to be etched out slowly in the granite, into a lifetime of relationship.  My prayer now is that I can learn this time more quickly than I learned the first time around.

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Tags: parenting