Note: While I find both Chris Rock and The Sopranos entertaining, I don’t necessarily endorse their ideologies (that is, I personally have nothing against strippers or psychiatrists). That said, if foul language offends you, it would be better not to click on the links!
Even John Mayer warns fathers to be good to their daughters, lest they end up with — well, someone like him, I suppose.
This past summer, we celebrated Father’s Day, and while it’s my husband’s fifth since my son was born, it was his first with a daughter. And as much as I like to challenge concepts of gender, it is an important difference, I think. I joke with my husband sometimes about what Chris Rock says is his only job, but the truth is that my husband is the first man my daughter will ever love. And that has to have an impact on the kind of men she loves as a woman, right?
Which makes me wonder, did it for me?
Numbers vs. Words
My father was a mathematician. I remember I used to call him from college with calculus questions and one conversation went like this: “Dad, most of these take about a full page to work out. Do you want me to wait while you get a pencil and paper?” And with absolutely no pretension, he said simply: “No, just read me the problem.” He saw the world through a lense of numbers; he thought in terms of balance and equal measures. He advocated fairness, rationality, knowledge, and plainness. Words, like fractions, were best simplified.
My husband, on the other hand, passes me the bill at restaurants so I can figure out the tip. He was studying political science when we met, but I used to say he had the soul of an English major. On our first date, he recited Shakespeare and John Milton. He kept journals of poetry. When I’m upset, he still sends me song lyrics. Yet all the same, he is a man who stands for equality, reason, philosophy, and simplicity. He once wrote a piece on a social forum in law school that made a case for stepping back from the intensity of it all every now and then and “enjoying a muffin.” I can’t tell you how many people threatened to find him and peg him with that muffin.
I don’t think I ever heard my dad say “I love you,” except for a “you too” if I said it first. But I always knew he did. This is not to say that he was not good with words; he read more than anyone I knew, he gave the best toasts at our weddings, and he loved to entertain a crowd with jokes and stories. Maybe it was just the words that seemed to quantify emotion that he struggled with. The magnitude inside the word love? It’s like a calculus problem: find the limit as x approaches infinity. Sometimes the answer takes an indeterminate form. Maybe he was just too humble a man to ask language to attempt to carry that burden.
Whatever Happened to Gary Cooper?
As the paradigms of modern masculinity continue to shift, I’ve certainly also considered that perhaps my father’s emotions are a mark of his generation. I started watching The Sopranos with my dad, and I always think of Tony Soprano asking Dr. Melfi, “Whatever happened to Gary Cooper?” Thanks to my dad, I not only know who Gary Cooper is, but I was probably the only eighth grader in my class to have a crush on him after watching High Noon.
I saw my dad cry exactly twice in my life. The first time was when I was 16 years old and he got a phone call that his brother had died. I heard his voice break and he rubbed his hand over his eyes as he told me something had happened and he had to leave for a while. I said okay and then hid in my closet until my mom came home.
My husband, on the other hand, has cried with me at the beginning of Up, several episodes of Scrubs, and that one Fresh Prince episode when Will Smith’s dad leaves (“Why doesn’t he love me, Uncle Phil??”). In college, I remember him calling home and saying good-bye to his dad before he left to study abroad in Ireland. He hung up and I saw his eyes well up a little as he told me he hoped he was becoming the kind of man his father is. Then, a few months ago, he lay in bed with our then three-year-old. He came out with a smile and a tear, relaying what Christian had said as he dozed into sleep: “Daddy, you’re my best friend. Forever ever.”
The only other time I saw my dad cry, however, was the night before my wedding. My father was the eternal jokester. Before my sister’s wedding, he worked out a lip sync routine to Fiddler On The Roof’s “The Dream” and enlisted my brother in a sketch in which he substituted a few encyclopedias belted together for my sister’s “Simple Rules to Live By.” At my rehearsal dinner, though, he took the stage and announced that he had racked his brain trying to find a way to embarrass me, but in failing to do
so, he decided instead to embarrass himself. He taught at Saginaw Valley State at the time and had used the last several months of his 90 minute drive to teach himself the lyrics to “Daughter of Mine.” And my father– the mathematician, the pragmatist, the stoic– stood on a stage in front of over a hundred of our closest family and friends and cried while he sang this to me. I remember hugging him afterward, feeling my sweat and tears mix into his as he held me, and that memory sank down into both our cores.
Hands-On Dad
When I was cleaning out our nursery after our son moved into his “Big Boy Room,” I came across a stack of feeding and diaper logs my husband had printed for us. Nearly all of the handwriting on it was his. Immediately after, I wrote a letter to my son, telling him, “When your grandfathers had their first children, I’m pretty sure they couldn’t have created police sketches of infant stool and were probably pretty sure that a football hold was something you only did to, well, a football.”
I have a lot of memories of my dad from my childhood: He came to every one of my soccer games, we had regular movie nights, and I would sometimes pretend to fall asleep during late car rides home because I loved the feeling of curling up in his arms when he carried me to my room. But still, the predictable answer when I as
ked him for permission for anything was: “Go ask your mother.” We talked often about movies, the Red Wings, and whatever we were doing in math class, but the messier parts of my life were reserved for my mom. When I didn’t have a date for my senior prom, I yelled at everyone else in the house who tried to make me feel better or — to my extreme embarrassment — tried to help me find a date. I remember standing outside by the car with my dad before church one morning and he awkwardly walked over and put a hand on my shoulder. “It’ll get better,” he told me and retreated to the safety of his driver seat door. For my dad, a surly teenage daughter was essentially an unfactorable equation: all the solutions were either irrational or imaginary.
And yet when my son has a tantrum, my husband jumps right in. “Hey,” he tells him. “Look at me. Crying won’t fix your problem right now, but words will. So, use your words and tell us what you want.” Even when Christian was younger, he pulled out what I called Baby Jedi Mind Tricks. My husband would look at him and say, “Breathe in… Breathe out… Breathe in…” and Christian would relax and regain himself. “You’re a baby whisperer!” I told him. I sat by the monitor a few nights ago and listened while John put him to sleep. He let him ramble on about his day, and then prayed with him. When he asked him who he wanted to pray for, he didn’t miss a beat when Christian replied, “Chase from Paw Patrol.” And so my little boy and his father prayed together for an animated dog.
I know a four-year-old boy is different than a fourteen-year-old daughter, and while I do think there will be many conversations best suited for Mom, I have total confidence that my husband will learn how to speak teenage girl better than my dad did. He already has no issue stepping out on a dance floor with her, he’s become surprisingly good at both dressing her and finding a matching hairbow, and he once spoke to a co-worker using only Taylor Swift lyrics.
This Is What I Know
Did I marry a man just like my father? No, I certainly didn’t. Are they similar? Absolutely. If my father had been different, would I have loved a different man? I don’t know. Here’s what I do know: I never questioned my father’s love. I never question my husband’s. I don’t know what kind of man my daughter will eventually fall for. What I do know is this: She will always know what it’s like to have a man’s unconditional love. I hope she never settles for anything less.
So — Did You Marry A Man Like Your Father?
This is fantastic writing!
No, My Husband is not like My Father, but he has a love for me, just like My Father. To My Father I was always first. When he brought ice cream home, he would bring a half gallon for all to share and a special pint just for me. His words would be “for my precious”. My Ramon has always put me before anything. He needs to paint the truck, the budget says no. I need an I Pad, a trip or whatever, the budget will say yes. He is caring, generous, and his love for me is obvious. We can
just sit and talk for hours about anything. You would think after so many years we would not have any thing new to say about ourselves. But you also have to remember old stories become new after a few years. So does our love for each other.