Becoming Dad

Becoming a father is an easy thing:  Find a willing, fertile female, engage in unsafe and unprotected sexual activity, repeat as often as opportunity presents itself, and voila', you're a father.  It's easy, and it happens literally millions of times a year around the globe.  We are a remarkably fecund species.

Becoming a dad, on the other hand, requires some indoctrination.  It helps if you had a good example in your own life to use as a reference point, or missing that, knew someone who did.  I learned a little about being a dad from my own father, and dozens of other strong, faithful, giving men.  Men grown up from boys by the acceptance of responsibility, and the willingness to bear its weight.  My own dad wasn't a sophisticated man or well educated, but he and my mom worked hard and gave me every advantage they could.  Now, in retrospect, I understand how often this commitment was sacrificial in scope.

I was an adopted child, as long time readers of this blog will know, yet I was absolutely his son, no question, no doubt, no discussion.  Sometime in the future I will likely write the story of how I spent my summer vacation last year, when I met my natural mother, a brother and two sisters, and talk about the kind of forfeit that mother made, and the courage it takes to make such a decision.  But that is for a later time when my thoughts are more centered.  Today is about dads.

I became a father, well, step-father, in June of 1983.  I approached it from the inside-out.  I married a woman with three children, ranging from six to fourteen, and skipped the whole diaper-changing, bottle feeding, toddler-proofing era of fatherhood.  Sweet!  I got along with the ex, the in-laws liked me, this fatherhood thing was a snap.  Oh, to be sure, there were the cultural conflicts--I was a conservative Republican, they were all tree-hugging Commies, well, Democrats anyway.  They had different familial traditions, and the kids had the temerity to take the chicken breast portion at the dinner table without even asking.  I was eighteen before I got the chicken breast.  I ate the wings, gizzards, legs and thighs.  That was an adjustment.  Truth was, I didn't really like the breast meat all that much, it was just that I was the grown up and I was entitled.

Becoming Dad turned out to be mostly about passing tests.  For the fourteen year old boy, who had spent three years as the 'man of the house', I had to pass the sticky test.  Was I going to be there when it mattered?  Was I trustworthy?  Would I try to rigidly impose a new set of values contradicting their own?  (Yes; yes; the jury is still out.)

For the middle daughter some of the questions were similar, but less sophisticated.  Who was I and what was I doing living in her house?  Did she have to do what I said?

The youngest probably just wondered where the stability would come from in his life.

It is a truism that kids learn and take their cues from the influential adults in their lives, and fortunately for me, acceptance by grandparents, and even the divorced father, gave me a little extra leeway to make mistakes, adjustments and atonements, and over time I became accepted.

People who know me well, and more than a few that have crossed swords with me, know that I am fiercely loyal to my family and friends.  I had opportunities to demonstrate those loyalties, and the kids learned that they could call me any time of the day or night, for any reason and I would knock down the gates of Hell if need be to get to them with help.  What's more important is they know it is still true today.

My kids grew up & got married, I grew grey (not necessarily a cause and effect) and they became adults and parents of their own.  I was honored when they came to me in times of crisis, and I got my chance at changing diapers, feeding bottles, watching sitting up become crawling, then doodle-bugging, then walking, and just last Wednesday, graduating from eighth grade.  This is about where I came in.

My kids make me proud every day.  They slay dragons for their children, they shoulder the burdens willingly, they sacrifice themselves for their children, they touch my heart.  They worry about me and their mother and their ninety-two year old grandmother.  If only a pinch of this caring came from me, I am fulfilled.

Becoming Dad was about learning how to share love, instill faith and hope and a sense of duty and honor. Becoming Dad was also about learning to accept differences, respecting other opinions, and keeping my mouth shut when I desperately wanted to shout a warning that would not be heeded.  Becoming Dad is about understanding that there are lessons that cannot be taught, but can only be learned, even by a dad.

Thanks, kids, for the education.  I wouldn't change a single minute, for it is through the trials and triumphs we all have become who we are  I love you all, each and every one--not from the ties of blood--but the strings of my heart.

Its in the Genes-Redux

Faithful readers of this blog may recall a post (It's in the Jeans) where I waxed nostalgic about my family and revealed that I was adopted. You should know that there is not a moment in my life when I wasn't aware of my adopted status. My parents thought it was fair for me to know from the beginning. No secrets, no whispered conversations, no big deal. Just a fact shared by millions of adoptees around the world. It was just one of those abstract bits that clog the neural network, like remembering the words to an old song, or recognizing a photo of a long departed movie star.


My adoptive parents loved me, sacrificed for me, worried, fretted, helped and cared deeply. I loved them, cared for them, handled their final affairs and was at their bedside in their last days and grieve for them still in my own way. Their family has always been my family. My childhood recollections are of tolerant grandfathers (both my grandmothers had passed by the time I was born), fishing and hunting trips, family holiday gatherings and never a whiff or suggestion that somehow I didn't belong. I have older sisters. Their kids are my nieces and nephews, and their kids kids are grand nieces and nephews, and one of them adopted. All cherished, all family--my family. So it was completely natural for me that when I married I 'adopted' this new set of relationships, enfolding all the love, heartache, challenges and joys that come with the shared human condition into my life experience.



But in some ways, I've been living a double life. I knew the names of my birth parents and that I had a sister, and as I grew older a few details were fleshed out by my parents. Not much really; in truth after the adoption, there wasn't any contact between the families. Its the way adoption was in the early '50's. No 'visitations' or open adoptions, especially of infants. It explains why my adoptive parents are shown on the birth certificate as my parents. I was a done deal before I was born. A mother in a distressed circumstance needed a home for a baby on the way. There was a hint of scandal in the air regarding my natural father (more on this perhaps, in a later post). My mother's father was a County Sheriff, my father a charter member of the Idaho State Police. They had lost a young child only two years earlier. Fate, kismet, call it what you will; arrangements were made in the way of small, rural towns far out west and I was born Robert Louis Pace. A member of the Pace/nee Davis family from the start, in every way but genetically. But occasionally, there was that moment of daydreaming when I wondered about that other family. That family that shared my genes, that maybe looked like me.



None of those daydreams every consumed a very big part of my thinking. I don't recall ever wondering if my life had been different if I had stayed with my genetic family, because the answer was self-evident. Of course it would; in the same way a left turn will take you someplace different than a right turn. It may be better or worse, but once embarked upon, the alternate will forever be unknown. My life was simply what it was and what I made of it. I had no burning passion to find my missing kin. I was busy living the moment before me, meeting the challenges of the day and reveling (when moments for reflection presented themselves) on the successes of the past. And yes, probably pissing and moaning about the mistakes as well.

My wife, to whom I have be married nearly half my days and who is more precious to me than the very breath of life, could not, however, imagine how I could have another family out there somewhere in the shrubbery and not be clamoring for more information about them. Early on she accepted that in the twilight of my parents life, I wished to spare them the spectacle of some tearful reunion which might leave them with some degree of angst or regret. They deserved my respect and gratitude for a job well done under difficult circumstances, and I aimed to give it to them.

As years passed, though, little tidbits would find their way into a file. A vacation trip through Idaho to show her my roots turned up puzzle pieces. We spent an hour or so in the tiny village where I was born looking for the hospital. Turns out, I was born in what is now the produce department of a Safeway store. The old hospital had been demolished, a shiny new one had replaced it and suddenly a sense of sand through the hourglass intruded upon my conciousness. A few more years passed as did my parents--and my excuses with them.

Still, I was happy with my family. Those other folks were probably nice enough. But they were just names on a page. Well, names and one photo. My Idaho trip had yielded a photo of my natural father taken a few weeks before I was born. While sharp and detailed, it was clearly not taken on one of his best days. I searched that face for traces of my own. My wife saw them, I couldn't see the forest for the trees, but I've always been bad at that sort of thing. The upshot is that while I understood these names were my family, they weren't really my living family. There were no memories of shared moments, no babysitting nieces, no baseball or football games. No connections. They were strangers, with whom I had nothing in common.

When I posted It's in the Jeans my wife came to me to tell me she had done a little research when I wasn't looking. Spouses can be sneaky that way. I had only been blogging for a little over a month, and had reluctanly opened a Facebook page only a week or so later. Social networking was something my grandkids did. As was texting, Tweeting, My Spacing, 12 Seconding and however many other killer apps about which I know or care nothing. My wife had done a little research: My father had an unusual family first name, my sister's was equally novel; this was information known to me already. Still, I had nothing in common with any of these people.

Until now. Two weeks before my son's wedding I received this response to an email I had sent a day earlier: "Yes Robert I am the W------ that is your sister. I have thought about you all my life, but never tried to find you as I didn't know if you wanted it. This is such a wonderful surprise. Our father's name was C------ and our mother's name is W-----. Please keep in contact." So much information in so few words. My natural father had passed. My natural mother was still living. My sister is out there, somewhere in the shrubbery. Except now she has email, and a Facebook page and reads my blog. Just by reading my blog she knows more about me that I about her. We are strangers still, but somewhere, somehow a starting point must be found, and for me it's still all about the adaptation to adoption. This time I try to adopt my genetic family. It remains to be seen if they are ready to adopt me. Time will tell if I can close this circle in my life, but for now, I suppose it's best to begin at the beginning.

Hi, sis. It's me, your brother Bob.

It's in the Jeans

Married life is much like white-water rafting. In the beginning there is uncertainty mixed with great expectations. Toss in a dash of trepidation and a generous pinch of exhilaration and the stage is set. Then you get in the boat and begin the journey. You start in fairly calm waters, then a few ripples rock the boat and pretty soon, great founts of water are crashing over you as you slam headlong into rocks and swirl around in eddy traps. Most times you float into placid waters again, life settles down and the business of simply getting through the rough patches and enjoying the scenery when you can, proceeds at the pace of the river.

Sometimes the raft is overturned. You find yourself in over your head, gasping for breath, flailing for something to cling to to survive. When you are very lucky someone grabs your hand and saves you. Your are luckier still if that hand belongs to your spouse. I'm the luckiest man alive, and I have the family to prove it.

Recently I have had reason to reflect on family life. The precipitating occasions for this introspection are two-fold. First is the passing of the torch from one generation to the next, and with it, all the memorabilia and family treasures reaching back more than a century. The second is the imminent nuptials of my eldest son.

In the first case, the care needs of the nearby Patriarch and Matriarch precipitated a change in their living circumstances to allow for more care and less room. This in turn created a need to begin the difficult process of winnowing the accumulated treasures packed carefully away in boxes and bins, files and folders, and sometimes just piles and pillboxes. Hundreds, perhaps thousands of photos to sort.

We all have them. Shoeboxes of snapshots, racks of slides, old albums with black and white Box Brownie snaps of people in front of old houses and old cars. People we don't recognize, places we don't remember, events erased from our memories, or just faded, like the photos. Moments frozen in time, collected for a posterity that will not want or understand them.

Many of these photos, along with newspaper clippings and old yearbooks, antimacassars and doilies, and favored dollies and souvenirs are deeply meaningful to our elders. The old cars and houses weren't old when they were photographed. The elders remember riding in the autos and running through the screen doors into kitchens smelling of freshly baked bread. They recall sitting in the chair protected with the antimacassar and the vase with the doily underneath. These were the homes and family of their youth, more vivid in their memory now than last night's supper. When they are gone that link will be broken, so while they are still with us we work to get a name attached to a face and a date and with great effort sometimes even an address. Someday, we assure ourselves, we will put together a proper record. Someday is so easy, and so distant and so comfortable; and so it goes that the demands of everyday life overtake us until someday we will be the Elders, needing less space and more care. We will be the ones struggling to put names to faces and places. We will be living vividly in our past.

Which brings me to the second case; imminent nuptials. I remember well excoriating a teacher on behalf of my eldest son when she casually and wholly erroneously charged him with a grievous scholarly sin. I remember playing a role in a movie he was making with a friend. I remember the birth of my first grandchild. I rub the scars of fixing cars and the more recent scabs of porches and railings. I look at photos of all these events and I am glad to be a thread in the life we all weave together.

It was a patient explanation my youngest son gave me when he was six. The roly-poly bugs were cold outside and needed a warm place to stay. This shoe box under the bed, he opined would be just right. His indignation was righteous when his good deed was underappreciated as the sow bugs made an abrupt departure to the garden. To this day his heart is moved by the plight of misfortune and injustice. He strives to make a difference as an educator and a thoughtful human being. Another life, another thread and there I am, part of the warp and weft.

My daughter wants to fix broken things; mostly broken hearts. She wants to rescue every puppy that needs a home, feed every hungry cat in the neighborhood and find a quiet place in a sunny window of her brain into which she can retreat. She has told me things which troubled her that she hasn't told another soul because she knows she can trust me. I cannot begin to explain what a gift that is and how valuable beyond measure it is to me. I am incapable of betraying such trust, yet I weave it still into the cloth.

My wife and I belong to what has been labeled the 'sandwich' generation. We care for the elders while managing our own lives and helping where we can with our children and grandchildren. We share the joys and shoulder the burdens willingly, knowing that each generation gets it's own turn as the filling of the sandwich. It is the richness of the fabric of family. We get tired and discouraged; we're only human, after all. But we carry on looking forward to better days and times and gazing backward to happy memories and preparing to introduce a bright new thread at the wedding.

Family and friends will gather from near and far, tears will be shed, joy will be shared, children will be embarrassed by old stories, bread will be broken and glasses raised in salute. I will be with my beautiful bride and her parents, my children and grandchildren, and our friends and our children's friends. Together we will weave just a bit more of this tapestry we call family.

It is particularly fitting for me personally; I was adopted as a child, never to know my birth family. So too was I adopted by this family; taken in, loved and embraced without so much as a single shared gene. Despite what you see in the movies, I'm pleased as punch to be a stepdad.