My father’s eyes

Until recently, I was way more focused on capturing photos of my kids for the ‘gram than on actually being present as a parent.

Last week, I chaperoned another one of my youngest son’s field trips. I’m a regular parent volunteer at his school, so most of his third-grade classmates remembered me right away. Not everyone did, though, including a kid whom I suspect is on the autism spectrum or dealing with Tourette’s. He looked me up and down as I sat in one of those tiny kid-sized chairs, grabbed me by the shoulders, got nose-to-nose with me, and loudly announced to everyone and no one in particular, 

“Victor’s dad looks like Victor—only with darker skin and a WAY bigger nose.” 

Moments like that remind me that I’m living the dream. I just love being a dad.

Even as a lowercase j, I knew fatherhood was in the cards for me. When adults asked what I wanted to be when I grew up, I always had two answers. One was vocational and changed every few months. First I wanted to be a meteorologist because the local weatherman oozed charisma and my mom thought he was amazing for being able to predict the weather—and I wanted to impress her. Then I cycled through medicine, dentistry, politics, forestry, computer science—you name it. 

But the other answer never changed: I wanted to be a dad.

So when folks asked lil’ j what I wanted to be, I’d say, “I want to be a [insert career of the week]—and a dad!”

I can see how some adults might have assumed I was making some precocious, dirty joke about hanky-panky, but that wasn’t the case. I was a late bloomer and wasn’t interested in girls until long after most of my peers were, and they didn’t get interested in me until college. My desire to be a dad wasn’t about conception; I just knew I wanted kids someday.

Eventually, I got good enough at conception to father my two boys, now nine and almost thirteen. But even though I’d wanted to be a dad my whole life, I didn’t start getting good at it until pretty recently. For most of my parenting life, I was more in love with the idea of being a father than the actual day-to-day work of fatherhood. Sure, I was up in the middle of the night changing diapers and checking all the “good parent” boxes, but I did most of it out of obligation. In loving awareness, I often would’ve preferred to be doing almost anything else. And I’m sure my lack of presence showed.

As my boys got older, I still showed up for them physically, but more often than not, my mind was somewhere else. I loved the identity of being a dad, but I was more interested in impressing my peers than parenting my kids. I planned museum trips and other outings with my kids, but I was more focused on capturing the perfect photo of them with a dinosaur skeleton or whatever for social media than actually being present. At bottom, I treated my kids more like accessories than actual humans. I liked looking like a “family man,” but I wasn’t spiritually invested in actual family life.

To be fair, I was absorbed in my human-rights law practice for many years, constantly strategizing how to outmaneuver the supersmart lawyers on the other side down to do anything to protect their corporate clients’ money. And after spending many years in a sexless marriage, once I split with my boys’ mom, a good chunk of my spiritual bandwidth got redirected toward making up for lost time in that department.

These days, I’m unemployed and in a deeply satisfying relationship. I hadn’t realized how much of my mind used to be consumed by pursuing work and women. But with one removed and the other fulfilled, it became clear how much space they’d been taking up—space that should have gone to my kids. With that clarity, I saw that while I had always been physically present, spiritually I might as well have been on Mars.

Now, when I’m with my kids, I’m with them. And I’m so grateful they’re still down to hang with me, because it turns out they’re pretty great. And super fun. Another reason I wasn’t exactly “Father of the Year” when they were younger is that—bless their hearts—I found littles kind of boring. They had limited moves and slowed me down. 

But now? Many of our interests overlap, and we spend real time together. We do stuff like play board games, go on scavenger hunts, and take epic bike rides all the time. Our favorite thing is being out in nature, and these days I can barely keep up with them on the hiking trail. My oldest and I have grown especially close: we talk books and current events, go to the orchestra, work out together—our hangs feel more like I’m kickin it with one of my homeys than my kid.

They’re my kids first, of course. But they’re also two of my best friends.

I was an only child with parents who, like me until recently, liked the idea of parenting more than the practice. Some of my earliest memories are of being alone in my room for hours and hours at a time. Looking back, I think part of my lifelong obsession with being liked and popular was really just about craving companionship.

The other day it was raining, I was bored, and I asked the boys to play a game. They hesitated, so I told them they didn’t have to play with me—but if they didn’t, they’d have to take a one-hour break from their devices. Five minutes later we were into in a rousing game of Catan.

In those moments, it occurred to me that the little-kid version of me—lonely, looking for playmates—would love knowing that decades later he’d reproduce himself into two amazing humans he could one day force to play with him.

Then it hit me: I sensed on a soul level that part of the little kid version of me already knew. That’s why he always said he wanted to be a dad when he grew up. 

And another part of him knew that someday he’d grow into the kind of man who’d get good at it.