July 19th, 2024 saw the wedding of my daughter, Kathleen, and my son-in-law, Matthew. It was an amazing day, filled with friends and family and joy and celebration. But, for me, July 18th, 2024 is the day that I have been waiting for and working towards for almost 19 years. That was the day that I had all four of my biological children in the same room with me all at the same time.
It is hard for me to articulate just how overwhelming and important that is for me. I’m not even sure how to begin to share how it is important to me. It has been such a long time in coming that I had, for a time, stopped believing it was ever going to come to pass.
But it did. Thinking about it continues to whelm me.
So I think, maybe, it is important to start at the beginning, with the moment I first recognized what it was going to mean for me to be a father.
Some time ago, during the last decade of the 20th century, my (now ex-) girlfriend was fully nine months pregnant. We were very young: me 18, her 19; of course, we didn’t really know how young we were at the time. Few of us really do at that age, and when you find yourself in the position of becoming a teen parent, it is very easy to ignore. It was early December. My ex was still in high school at the time, I had graduated earlier in the year, and we were living in an apartment in Vanier, a neighbourhood in the greater Ottawa area. I was working nights at Tim Hortons, back in the days when it was still primarily a coffee and donut place.
I had, through various trials and errors, discovered that I needed at least four uninterrupted hours of sleep during the day before going to work. If I was going to get less than that I found I was better to push through without sleep and catch up the next day. For various reasons, largely lost to my memory, I was on my third shift without sleep and starting to feel it. I had entered that weird, liminal place where everything was a little unreal and dreamlike. I received a call at work from my ex letting me know her water had broken, but her contractions were still fairly far apart so there was no rush to get to the hospital. Great, no problem – I could finish my shift and let my bosses know that I would not be able to work my next couple of shifts before heading home, which I did.
We finally headed to the hospital late that morning where we proceeded to spend the next 36 hours. I won’t take you through the blow-by-blow of her labour. I will simply say that it was long and hard and many things did not go right. As we approached that 36th hour, I found myself in the OR having my fingers nearly broken by my ex’s grip as my first child was pulled into this world with forceps.
This child was swaddled and placed in my arms. I looked down at this new life – blotchy, pale, still with a very pointy head – and my entire worldview changed.
There have been many artists and writers who have tried to describe that moment where everything changed. It is not an easy moment to describe: that movement from one understanding of reality to a completely new one. Some artists describe knowing that it was a moment of change; others talk about how they can only identify that moment in hindsight. Me, I knew.
I cannot overstate the impact of that moment. Nearly 31 years later I can still feel that moment in my memories. It was like cracking a glow stick – there is that tangible moment of the crack, and a small, instant glow where the two chemicals start to interact. But, unlike a glow stick, simply shaking me was not going to speed up the mixing of those chemicals. It’s not like I wasn’t already shook to my core!
There was an instant when I was just me, and my life was mine to live as I chose. Then there was a moment of extreme confusion. And then, as the dissonance and confusion washed over me and passed through me, I was left again, with me, but my life was no longer mine to live as I chose. I was a father, and this life in my arms was my responsibility. I took part in causing this life to be. Therefore, what I did in this world, how I affected this world, had consequences for this new life that I was responsible for.
Please keep in mind: I was nearly 5 days without any sleep at this point. I had no defenses against the psychological impact of this moment. Additionally, I was 18 years old. I had recently had a very abrupt break with my parents, and I was desperately trying to be an autonomous adult, so I had already come into this moment very vulnerable, even if I didn’t recognize it. And then, there was this life, this small person, who existed because of choices I had made.
And I was profoundly affected. I knew that something had changed, and I was acutely aware of what it was! I was a father, and I was never going to not be a father again. It meant, for me, at that moment, that I had to re-examine everything about how and why I was living my life.
I made my way home in a kind of hallucinogenic, foggy high. I had lunch with a friend where I must have appeared dangerously manic. I have vague recollections of trying to share this moment with my friend at the time, but I’m sure it was mostly incoherent. (More than thirty years later here I am still trying to find a clear way to explain it.)
So, having had a hugely impactful, personally transformative moment, and having stared into the face of my first child, I went home and passed out for a full 20 hours. As I slept, that glow-stick moment persisted, and the slow and steady transformation of my selfhood started to displace my previous self-image.
Growing up, I never had any dreams of being a parent, and I never imagined myself having children. I was an only child, with a strange and challenging relationship to my own parents, so the idea of being a parent never really established itself in my mind as something to think about, to imagine, or to aspire to. Further, I was very (very!) self-oriented, and disinclined to consider others except where the consequences impacted me. I had never really considered the idea of having children. As a result, I had no preconceived ideas of what kind of father I would be or wanted to be, nor how I would respond to children of my own.
As anyone who has raised children from newborn on can tell you, those first weeks and months are a crash-course in taking care of another life. My ex still had almost two months of school left before she graduated, and I was still working nights so while she was at school I was at home, sleep deprived already from work, and taking care of a newborn. Every day continued to reinforce for me that I was a father and I had a responsibility to make a world for this child of mine.
As the days and weeks became weeks and months, my identity as father became more established. Every choice I made now was made in this new context. I was not very good at the start. I continued to throw myself into overuse of alcohol and drugs, while still pushing myself to cook, clean, and engage in every aspect of raising a child that I could see at the time. It wasn’t a great combination, but, with the benefit of age, experience, and hindsight, I can look at that poor young father that was myself and understand how those choices were made, and what he (I) was trying to do.
A little more than two years later we had a second kid. This was a less dramatic moment for my identity, clearly, as I had already been a father for a while, but it was no less impactful. I was surprised to discover just how much joy I felt at meeting my second child. I didn’t remember joy the first time around – there were too many other feelings at that birth. But, having discovered how much I loved my first child, I was way more excited in the anticipation of meeting my second. And, even though this second child was colic-y, and I was much more adept at near constant drug and alcohol consumption, I found that my sense of being a father was increased in a way I was unprepared for. Yes, joy, but also a sense of failure at not being the father I could be, but also confusion because I didn’t yet know how to be that father.
I can recognize that I went into fatherhood with a very well developed sense of responsibility, and that sense was tied directly to ideas of freedom. Because of how I was raised, my worldview asserted that, as long as I could demonstrate that I met all of my responsibilities then no authority could deny me my freedom. The added ingredient of fatherhood made for a confusing and ever-present sense of danger: I had to take care of these new lives or I would lose my freedom, but being a parent truncates freedom by its very nature: my life was no longer exclusively my own, and the responsibilities of parenthood are continuous, and they change as the children grow. I found myself rapidly oscillating between desperately trying to do everything I was supposed to do for the kids and desperately exercising my freedom through alcohol and drugs. The contradictions were not sustainable.
And so it went for another couple of years – lots of drugs and lots of alcohol and lots of diapers and lots of formula and lots of learning how to cook for children and lots of working. All of those lots of helped me continue to deny my internal intuition that told me that I could be, and needed to be, a better father than I had been to that point.
Inevitably, there came a point when I could no longer deny to myself that I needed to make a change. When I looked hard at that idea, I came to understand that I had already been changing. Those changes were directly related to that glow-stick moment, but I had been living as if that moment was all there was. As my first born approached their 4th birthday, I approached a decision that I didn’t know how to explain, yet, but the decision itself was clear – I needed to leave the relationship with my kids’ mother if I was ever going to be the father I needed to be.
I did it poorly. That’s an understatement – I made an unnecessary mess of the whole thing.I don’t yet know how to do it well, but I can look back and declare that I could have done it better.
I left. I took a job in another city and I tried to make joint custody with my ex work. I consulted with a lawyer about seeking custody of my kids, but I was told, repeatedly, that as the father I was unlikely to win any custody battle (this was the mid-late 90’s.) After several months of difficult interactions around visitation with the kids, I came to the conclusion that my ongoing efforts to be a part of my kids’ lives at that time was headed in a very destructive direction and if one of us didn’t disengage then my ex and I were going to destroy each other leaving my kids with no functional parents. So, I made one of the hardest decisions of my life – I chose to disengage and let my ex take sole custody of our kids.
I cannot express how painful, heartbreaking, and soul-crushing that decision was. There was no consultation, no explanation that could make it better.
I was now that father who left his children. It left a scar on my soul that is still tender, made all the more painful and sensitive than other scars by the fact that it was a series of my own choices that led to that point. It didn’t matter that I was doing it to be a better father, or that I was learning to be a better person – no reason I could voice would mean anything to two children whose father was not there because he chose to leave.There were not enough tears to soothe that pain, and that pain has never fully subsided. I still ache at that decision. I am still filled with sorrow for all the years I was not there.
But, having made the decision, my resolve to interact with the world in such a way as to make it a better place for my kids was redoubled. And a new element had entered my life that supported and participated in that decision – my wife, Carol Anne.
Before we were married, Carol Anne and I had a lot of discussions about what we wanted our marriage to be. One of the points that I needed to reconsider was the idea of having more kids. Carol Anne wanted children. I already had children and, knowing what babies and toddlers were like from first hand experience, I was concerned that I may not have the energy for babies again (at the ripe old age of 24!) That is to say: I was hesitant. However, several things changed my mind. Well, really, one thing changed my mind on several fronts: Carol Anne.
First of all, Carol Anne made it clear to me that having kids was really important to her – that, in fact, there was no point in us pursuing marriage if kids were off the table. Additionally, and throughout our entire relationship, Carol Anne actively supported and encouraged my pursuits to be a father to my kids, even while I was absent from their lives. ensured that they were included in our wedding by mentioning our sadness at their absence and our hope that they would be with us before too long. Every place we moved, we talked about how we could arrange our living space in case one or both of the kids suddenly came into our lives. Even before Carol Anne and I had kids together, we were discussing my kids, the hopes and sadness, the dreams and fears, together.
It has only been very recently that I have discovered that my development as a father, my success (if I can call it that) in being the father that I am, is tied directly to my learning how to be a husband. In my previous relationship, I was so focused on being a father, I did not put effort of consideration into being a husband. With Carol Anne, our relationship was so different from any other I had experienced., and our commitment to each other was so automatic, that getting better at being her husband naturally entangled with being a father, which, of course, naturally led to us having our own children. I now understand that learning to be a husband, a partner, changed how I communicated, and how I thought about my choices and actions. I became better at recognizing and understanding how things that affected me also affected my partner. It changed how I thought and how I communicated. And it also made me better at being a father, because I had a better and deeper understanding of how everything that happens in a life also happens to everyone who is connected to that life. So as Carol Anne and I raised our kids together, I continued to work at being a better father.
Nowhere, at any time, did either of us lose sight of the desire to have Sam and Nathan included. Year after year, we marked all four birthdays together – Sam’s, Nathan’s, Kathleen’s, and Martin’s.
So, I was a father on two fronts: active and present with Kathleen and Martin, and absent but aware and mindful of Sam and Nathan.
In October of 2013 I had a migraine attack that never went away. It marked the beginning of a long, difficult period that, again, saw me absent from my kids’ lives. It wasn’t the complete absence that Sam and Nathan experienced. It was an intermittent and ever-changing absence. Some days I was completely gone, knocked out by migraine symptoms and isolated in my bed; sometimes I was around, but diminished. I missed recitals and concerts. I couldn’t engage with them in their activities. My presence or absence was unpredictable, and my ongoing pain and debilitation affected the day-to-day mood of the household. Further, the best of me tended to be spent at work, leaving only leftovers and second-bests for my wife and kids.
It has taken me a long time to recognize how decisions I was making were counter to my commitment to being a husband and father. I realize that I was trapped by the fallacy that the husband and father must be able to provide – which is to say: work – and I lost sight of a more important concept: that being a present and active father provides more to a child’s life than any amount of money.
I am jumping over a lot of important moments in the service of brevity and focus (he says nearly 3000 words in.) There have been so many moments over the decades of my fatherhood that marked important lessons, deepening of understanding, and complete transformations of perspective that all of my children have helped me learn. I don’t know how to share that, yet, without an entire book’s worth of words to trace and explain how each moment changed me as a father.
I can say that my children and my wife have made me a better father. I know that being a father has become a central understanding of who I am – I have been a father for 31 of my 49 years alive! I have known only 18 years without the responsibility of being a parent. And still, for too many of those years I was trying to be a parent to children who were not in my life. Or, perhaps just as importantly to understand, I spent too many years not being a part of their lives.
When my eldest child Sam reached out to establish a relationship with me (shortly after they left home,) my heart rejoiced. At the same time, I was scared about how I would be received. Nonetheless, it was a start, an opportunity to be an active and present part of another one of my child’s lives, and I did my best to seize the opportunity! I know that most of the credit for making this connection work goes to Sam. Their dedication to connecting to their siblings meant that any fumbling and shortcomings I may have presented could be bypassed in order for them to have a relationship with Kathleen and Martin. I could have done (and still could be doing) better; but having established the connection, we have not lost it. In the process, I learned that I tend to focus on the life right in front of me, and I need to make an effort to connect with loved ones who are at a physical distance.
Further, because of where they were in their life journey, Sam began their renewed relationship with me with a great deal of honesty and candor. I learned about the importance of their relationships to their siblings, about their evolving relationship to themselves, and about how they were choosing to live life as honestly and authentically as they could. This has had a profound influence on me as I navigate the relationships I have with all of my children. I, too, am learning how to share the deeper authentic parts of myself with my children, and there is no doubt that Sam set the example for me.
All of this is to say: the credit for sparking the long journey of reconnecting with my kids must go to Sam. They made me a parent; they also showed me the way through to reconnection. Their ongoing tenacity in pursuing the relationships, with uncompromising authenticity, has been a critical and essential part of my journey as well as their own.
And that tenacity has had far reaching consequences. Because of the reconnection between Sam and myself, Sam was also able to connect with Kathleen and Martin. These relationships continued to develop independently from me and I could see how meaningful and important that was for everyone involved. When Kathleen moved to Toronto, one of her goals was to spend more time with Sam. That, too, had extended consequences, because Kathleen was able, through her relationship with Sam, to spend time with Nathan and establish her own relationship there as well!
As I watched my kids establish and grow their relationships with each other, I came more acutely aware of my lack of connection to Nathan. As I fumbled around trying to find a gentle way to establish a connection, Sam helped me to understand that I needed to be the one to reach out to him. I could not rely on Nathan doing what Sam did in reaching out to me. Sam helped me to learn and understand that Sam’s way was not Nathan’s way. It was up to me to reach out and make the effort if there was to be any success in reconnecting.
And thank goodness I learned this! Just a short time ago (it could still be counted in months) I managed to connect with Nathan, my second born and the child I have had the least contact with over the years. Again, when the opportunity came to connect, and the request was made to connect in person, Carol Anne helped me recognize that the cost of travel was so much less important than being there. It didn’t matter that we couldn’t afford it financially, we couldn’t afford – emotionally, psychologically – to miss this moment. So, I flew to Nathan, had some hard, initial, conversations, and established a relationship with my son.
And then, all of a sudden, after nearly two decades, I was talking with all four of my kids! Yowza! It was a marvelous feeling! There was still so much to learn and do, of course. I needed to learn what meant to be a father to adult children I had no hand in raising. I am still learning, but I am confident that they are still learning what it means to have their father again for the first time.
And, of course, it also meant that my kids had all their siblings in their lives. I hadn’t understood how important that was, or how impactful it would be for all of them, until Kathleen’s wedding.
Because, all of sudden, we were all together! The four children I fathered, my wife who helped me to maintain faith, and me: we were together, present, and sharing an event! We were talking and sharing and laughing and celebrating the first of my kids (the siblings!) to get married! And it was happening with their father! I think that glowstick that cracked more than 30 years ago is glowing about as brightly as it ever has.
I’m still processing how it has affected me, and this piece is part of that processing. However, there are a few things I chewed on long enough to be able to share with some confidence.
Having all of my kids and their partners together helped me to understand that, despite the very different experiences my kids have had of me over their respective lives, I am, singularly, their father, collectively, even while I have personal relationships with each of them. Those personal relationships live and evolve and grow because of the relationship I have with that child, because of what I learn and how I learn to respond to the person. At the same time, I have learned that, as their father, I hold a shared place in their lives.
Kathleen and Martin shared with me their observation that they had never seen me so relaxed as I was when all four of them were here, together, in our home. I believe that is true. There are several stories of how I have lost my mind in panic whenever I thought I might have lost one of my kids. I am normally very good and reliable in a crisis – except, it turns out, if that crisis involves not being able to find one of my kids.
As I mentioned earlier, I didn’t grow up with a vision of myself as a father, so I have never tried to anticipate what kind of father I would be. That being said, I also had this idea that my job as a parent would be over when my kids entered adulthood. I was wrong. It turns out that parents still have a role to play in their children’s lives once they are adults.
I have also learned that I cannot make up for my past absences. What I can do is make the most of being present now, and that has its own value. Being a parent to adult children is different, and learning what they need from a father as adults is, like their childhood, an ongoing and ever-changing process. Some of the experiences are personal to each of them, and some are shared.
And it’s me! I’m their father! To all of them! And they all get to share in the same father to their adult lives.
It fills me with love and joy and excitement. It also, very occasionally, threatens to crush me with fear and worry and concern. Regardless, I am content to let it whelm, and to let that whelming remind me that this is now, this is real, and it is not just something I am hoping for.
However long it took, I am a father to all of my kids. Thank you, Sam, Nathan, Kathleen, and Martin, for letting me fulfill that role, however imperfectly. I love you all, collectively and individually. Whatever life throws at us all in the future, I will remain, to the end of my days and beyond, your father.
