Dad Stuff

This coming Friday, my daughter ships off to Texas State University. As a divorced dad without custody of my children, the years since that massive fracture have been challenging, fun, enlightening, scary, guilt ridden, frustrating, often enraging, and at times indescribably wonderful.

She’s not going that far away, and yet the emotional impact this has proven to be on me has been massive. I took her home last night after spending our last weekend together, and as I suspected, there were points during that time where I was reduced to a crying lump of shit.

My daughter is my second child. I was there in the delivery room when both of my kids were born, cut both their cords, held them both in the fold of one arm, and it was everything you would think it would be, and so many more things you could never anticipate.

My son’s delivery was tough. His mother wanted to have a natural childbirth, and to facilitate that, we partook in natural childbirthing courses, which were all meant to be leading up to our going to the birthing center when she went into labor, and delivering our son without the aid of medicine and the cold sterility of the hospital.

In the end, we had to rush to a hospital after all and deliver him there, because his mother’s blood pressure spiked at the last minute. The hospital did a great job, but we were operating out of pocket. All our months of planning were erased in a moment.

As it turned out, the pain was more than their mother could handle, and she requested an epidural, damn near demanded one. But there were so many kids being born that night that the anesthesiologist never even had time to get to her before our son was born. The birth went off without a hitch, but mom was so exhausted that she could barely hold him in her arms. Getting him to latch on and begin breastfeeding also proved to be a huge challenge, which added frustration and guilt to her exhaustion.

It wasn’t the magical, wonderful experience we were hoping for. We had a healthy, beautiful baby boy, thankfully, but as first time parents, having to do it almost entirely on our own, we were terrified.

My daughter’s birth was a different story. This time, my wife was all in on the epidural. She went into labor on a warm April morning, and we headed off to our selected hospital and delivered our daughter with much less pain and heartache for their mother. She held our daughter easily, cried, smiled, all the stuff you want her to do, and it was brilliant.

Doing it the second time around proved to be much easier overall than the first. My daughter barely even cried, herself. She was, and still is, very much a well contained, calm person, who keeps her emotions close to her chest. The epidural allowed my wife to enjoy the birth without being completely siderailed in agony. it’s every mother’s right and privilege to choose the manner of her birthing experience, as long as it is safe for both mother and child.

When the doctor came to our room to give our daughter her first check up, she detected a murmur in her heartbeat. To our horror, she told us that this was almost certainly due to our daughter having a hole in her heart. A birth defect. It was not the news you want to hear, nor in our case, had any reason to expect. Everything had gone so well up to that moment, and now this. It’s impossible to put into words the way news like this makes you feel.

What confused us was the way the doctor seemed to almost make light of it. She explained that this was a common phenomenon, and that the overwhelming majority of these holes grow themselves shut in a short time. The ones that don’t, however, require open heart surgery to permanently close them.

We were crestfallen. This tiny, defenseless, peaceful, little girl, our little girl, had a defect in her heart. The doctor remained unmoved, not cruel, just unaffected, and a bit oblivious to our fears.

I mentioned guilt earlier. Guilt had been a driving force in the course of my fatherhood. It has never gone away, and I expect it never will. If you love your children, and want the best for them above all, then you will never believe that you have done enough. No matter what you do, are, are capable of, your wealth, status, etc., it’s irrelevant. If you love your children and you want them to be happy in life, prepare to feel inadequate.

Finding myself in the middle of our final weekend before she’s no longer just my little girl, and is now her own person, well, if you want to talk about feeling as if I didn’t do enough, fucking hell. It was a rough three days.

Yet, the most important thing—if not that only thing—that matters, is that she did this. On her own. She worked hard in school because she wanted to, made the decisions for herself, took her life by the balls, and has become the woman I always wanted her to be: strong, smart, funny, tough, very much her own woman. And there’s no possible way that I could be more proud.

Soon after receiving the news about the heart defect, we took our daughter to Texas Children’s Hospital to get a full cardiac workup, to see exactly what it was we were dealing with. It was nerve wracking. But it was also clear that she was in great hands. I sat with her as she had a scan taken of her heart, watched as she dozed off while the tech ran the scanner across her chest, everything was mercifully peaceful and smooth. Their level of care was impressive, and a huge help.

The results came later in the mail, and we were relieved to find that the holes, yes, two of them, were already showing signs of growing shut. That meant no need for surgery, and no need for a lifetime of taking antibiotics prior to any future surgeries or invasive dental procedures, for the rest of her life. She was in the clear. She would be fine.

My kids moved a lot over the earlier years of their lives as their mother struggled to get her feet under her. This included a couple of times where she moved them far away—once to another state, and once to another city. Both of these moves were absolutely devastating for me, because one, I had no say in them, and two, relations between my ex-wife and me were to the breaking point. There was a time where she even cut me off from them, and they were off living in another city, totally beyond my reach. I drank a lot at the time, for a number of reasons, among them that it was the only way I knew how to deal with those complex and overwhelming emotions. Or, I should say, not deal with them.

As an adult, I have perpetually struggled with money. I don’t play the game well, it’s not me. I hate the rat race, hate stuffy, button-down, cubicled soullessness, and I’ve never figured out how to rig the system to work in my favor. Instead, I have adapted to my limitations and pieced together the best life I could, for me, my children, and my amazing wife. It’s been impossibly difficult at times, frightening, helpless, and hopeless. But I am still here giving it everything I’ve got, and more importantly, so are they. And we are making it happen, despite it all. Because that’s who we are. We are stubborn motherfuckers, and we will carve out our joy however we can, the rest of the world be damned.

Let your children see you cry. It hurts, loving someone, it hurts sometimes so bad you feel like you’re going to come apart. It feels as if a force you’ve tried to subdue for so long is finally coming for its due, because, well, that’s exactly what’s happening. And when that happens, hold on tight, because I’m telling you right now, it’s worth it. All of it.

Go get ‘em, Mara, you are the fucking world.

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