I grew up without a father. My dad moved out of the house when I was very young. My mom found someone new when I eight, but the less said about him, the better.
From a young age I knew I wanted to be a father, and when I thought about what kind of dad I would be, my past showed me only what I didn’t want to be. What’s the negative image of being a dad? I had no sense of how my own father would have parented, but I have learned, over and over again, that you cannot define your parenting in opposition to another. I knew I wanted to be nothing like my mother’s husband. As you look at a negative from film, you see it’s blurry and small. Details are hard to see. The photo negative is no plan. I am grateful for male friends and family – specifically Pat, my brother-in-law Sam, and my father-in-law Jonathan, all for showing me other ways to show up for their kids.
I stumbled into the Buddha dharma when I was my older son was in middle school, and not a moment too soon. Buddhism didn’t magically transform me into a superdad, but it made things a little easier. The six perfections of the Mahayana tradition are generosity, patience, ethical conduct, joyful effort, meditation and wisdom. All of them have shown me a way to parent, especially generosity, patience, and joyful effort. Believe it or not, there is a way to find joy in the 7 millionth drive to soccer practice.
When my older son was a small child, pre-k, I would demand that he speak to me respectfully, because I was his father. He would yell back: “why should I?” When I suggested it was a sunny day, he would correct me, and spot the one cloud to prove me wrong. Picture cartoon steam coming from my ears. What I didn’t know then was he was offering me a meditation. My fury wasn’t his. He didn’t cause it.
It’s much funnier now.
To this day he loves to pick fights with me. I have learned he argues to understand things: he picks things apart. To his overly sensitive father, this feels cruel, but he is sweet, caring, and deeply loves his family. I grew up in a household where any conflict was unsafe, from the “children are better seen and not heard, but actually, also unseen would be ideal” school of parenting. So I set out to create an environment where conflict is safe. It worked! And it drove me fucking crazy.
My anger at him when he picks a fight or acts ornery is really asking “how did I fail to teach him to change?” The irony of this is that he is changing, every single day. So I must let go of my illusions of failure in helping him grow while he grows in spite of and because of my help. Help which to a 17-year-old is a healthy mix of nagging, boring and blah blah blah mixed in. Our children do not learn anything from us, and they learn everything. And not just my bad habits.
When I started writing this, we were on vacation, and my son yelled at me for calling him out for refusing to help me do something (an inane argument when I see it written) and then an hour later he’s building a sand castle with his younger brother, content, calling back to his younger self. Accepting impermanence – change – is an important part of Buddhist practice.
When he was born and I stumbled around the hospital that first morning, getting a lot of “congrats dad” from staff, I had some vague expectation that life from here on out would be somewhere between a Norman Rockwell painting and a Mr. Rogers episode.
Buddhism teaches that attachment, avoidance and ignorance are the three poisons that cause suffering. Some of the biggest struggles of parenting, and life, involve holding onto attachments, avoiding what I fear, and being ignorant to the way things really are. My son is my dharma teacher because he reminds me of the illusion of what parenting SHOULD be, and my attachment to that illusion:
Babies should sleep through the night, instead of suffering colic.
Children should put away their toys the first time you ask.
Teens should engage in healthy extracurriculars, not tagging buildings in the middle is the night.
I’m attached to who I think he should be, without being open to who he is.
Because I fear. Fear that I have failed to pass on all the instructions, fear that he’s not ready, fear that 18 is way too young to leave home. Because I’m deep down screaming “SURVIVE!” and he’s yelling back “I can’t hear you soccer practice TikTok beer pong little brother fuckface don’t be a **** ***** **** Dad can I have the keys can I have money why do I have to have a curfew?” and I yell back “Survive! Please?”
Like in any other faith, in Buddhism we struggle to live the path. To live the dharma. It’s easy to practice letting go of attachment or facing fears when I’m meditating, but letting go or facing fear in front of this man who used to be a baby in my arms? That is my dharma work, over and over and over.
I started this essay two and a half years ago. The seventeen year old is now 3000 miles away, working a summer job in his college town. His younger brother is almost seventeen, and provides me his own dharma teachings.
Thank you boys.
Wow, this one was a tear jerker in such a beautiful way. I hope they read this some day