I never expected to date a man with kids.  It was never part of my life plan, and yet here I now am, a middle-aged woman, in love with a man with a  child who is only 5 months older than the eldest of my daughter’s two girls!  We joke that I became a parent way too early and he became one way too late, but the serendipitous silver lining is that these three little girls play together and love each other as if they’ve always been in each others lives…they bicker as sisters do, but they hug and laugh and share like best friends do, and when I got engaged on Christmas morning, they enjoyed very much the laughter that ensued when they discussed the change in their relationship status, that this 9-year-old in their life would become their “aunt and Mommy’s sister!”

There are times when his daughter is here that I have to bite my tongue, or simply and more easily I might add, go into another room, because I don’t want to overstep a line…he and his ex are very dissimilar to me in many ways in how they parent; their rules, their level of strictness, what they expect or don’t, and so I try not to insert too much of my parenting style into their parenting, but it’s hard…she’s in my house…There are other times when his daughter is here that I watch how he looks at her, how he teaches her things, how she looks to him and at him, how he helps her and guides her, and to watch him love his child warms my heart.  He is very affectionate and nurturing  to my granddaughters too…I’ve watched him teach them how to keep time behind a drum kit, how to bait a fishing hook, how to stand up on a boogie board, and most recently he taught the littlest one how to tie her shoes…and yet I sometimes feel something like a sadness, a profound sense of loss…the realization that if only he and I had met when we were young…I think how awesome it would have been to make a family with him, how wonderful it would have felt to be the woman who made him a father…

This man I love has no father, his father died when he was only 17, which would be tragic enough in itself but for the fact that he also lost his mother when he was only 15…when I think about how many times a week I need my parents, or talk to my dad, or ask him a question, or think of how he would have done something, or seek him out for advice or to confirm whether or not I am doing something right…I think about this man I love, who does not have that luxury.  He had to grow into his role as “man” with no role to model.  He has two brothers-in-law who are old enough to be his father, and has talked to me about how much they both have meant to him over the years, and helped him and guided him when he was so young and suddenly without parents, but I imagine it is not at all the same…not even close…I often want to ask him about his dad, but I know it makes him sad; what he liked about his father and what he didn’t, what he learned from him, and what he wished he had…I often wonder what his dad would think of this man I love, the man he grew up to be…would he be proud, would he have been a good grandpa to this other little girl now in my life, would he like me, would he think I was a good woman to his son?

I tried to buy a father’s day card for this man I love.  I went to four different stores during this month, I read dozens of cards and not one “said” anything at all like I would want to say to him…the ones that had great designs were ridiculously expensive and the ones that were cheap were ugly and written for a buffoon…Nothing expressed at all how I sometimes think about what it would have been like, to have loved him when we were young, to find out I was pregnant and to be excited, to plan a future and to create a human being out of nothing because two people fell in love, to wonder what he or she would look like, would its eyes be more my green than his blue, knowing both of us had eyes that change color with the seasons…what it would have been like to watch him comfort a crying infant, what it would have been like to watch him watch how the eyes dart around behind the lids while the baby deeply sleeps…all those thoughts I thought by myself when I was pregnant, and how beautiful it would have been to think those thoughts with somebody who loved me and I loved and who was anxiously awaiting this human whose very first breath would take us from Couple to Family…falling in love late in life has its perks, but this, above all else, is the drawback…we missed sharing a lot of beautiful dreams…I refer to him often as “the boy” not to be condescending, but because we are sometimes so in love that we do really feel like teenagers…but he is man who is a father and who does his very best to be a good one, and there is nothing boyish about that…

Today is Father’s Day, but in my world, every day is.  I am one of those blessed women who has one of those Dads…The kind who knows how to do anything, is smart, thoughtful, generous, does everything without ever complaining, and often without having to be asked.  When my mom got a full time job when I was in 4th grade or so, he would do the vacuuming, laundry, make dinner, and anything else that would HELP the family in addition to all the other things he did around the yard or the house, plus he still worked full time too…I remember some friends at various times commenting that their dads never helped with anything, and even then at a young age, I knew that my father was special, different, better….he is all the things I suppose a man should be, wrapped up into a tall skinny handsome package who loves my mother…The kind of man to whom every man is compared.  My Mom will tell me and my sister that Daddy is not as perfect as we think, but those words fall on deaf ears…

If you grow up with a lazy, deadbeat, uninspired, unemployed, unkind, alcoholic or drunk or jerk of a father, then a man who actually has any sort of job, actually helps a bit around the house or yard, and does not kick your dog, turns out to be “good enough.”  But when you grow up with a father like I have, nothing seems to ever be good enough, and that’s hard…it’s hard to hear at one time or another from every man you ever cared about, “I’m not like your Dad” when all you really wanted was to find someone with qualities very much like your dad…There are things about my father that would annoy me if someone exactly like him was my husband, to be clear, VERY MUCH annoy me & drive me crazy mad, but I have never looked for a man to be just like my dad, I just had always wanted to find someone much like him…I have found that when a man does something that is in a way or manner or style as my Dad would have, or says something similar to something my Dad might say, I am joyful and almost giddy…but to be clear, when a man does something, or really in most cases, DOES NOT do something,  I feel emotion rather like anger…and a voice in my head says, Daddy wouldn’t have done that…

I think sometimes what I will do when he is gone…he has taught me SO much…will I remember everything I learned?  When we built this house, my dream house, this space where I feel I most belong, where I feel like I truly am at home, he came here almost every single night after we both worked all day, to work with me…he came here every single weekend to work with me…he taught me HOW to DO SOMETHING almost every single day it seemed…and suddenly after 365 days, literally, from the morning we broke ground to the afternoon I got my C.O., I realized that although I hired sub-contractors for many of the tasks that go into building a house, WE built a house!!!  My house!!!  …but it’s not just that, it’s everything…he has taught me how to do so many things and yet I still ask him to do things for me, or help me do things, and I wonder, when he is not on this earth, will I know how?  Will I remember what he has taught me?  It makes my heart ache when I think about it.  I can no more conceive of a world without my father in it, than I can imagine living without my limbs…

I know some women who had and have really terrible fathers, I am sure they would read these words and think, “oh poor you, your perfect father, boo-hoo, oh poor you can never find a perfect boyfriend like your mother got, oh woe is you…” and think about the times their Dad was drunk, or mean, or yelled, or got fired, or the family had no money, or he got arrested, or cheated, or-or-or…NOPE, none of that in my world…My dad has never been unkind, he has never been out of work, we never wanted for anything, I can count on one hand the number of times I have ever heard him raise his voice, he never missed work EVER, we always had enough money (or it seemed so,) he never got in ‘trouble’ with anyone in any way, and he ALWAYS has loved and been true to my mother.

The way that my father talks about how he loves my mother, and the way he looks at her when she does not know he is looking, is the stuff that great sonnets and poems and love songs are written about…my father truly loves my mother…and I suppose, if I were to break down all of the components of my life, what it means to be a daughter, what my father means to me, and the knowledge of having had the good luck to be born to people who dearly care for one another, and who had the same dreams as a young in love couple for the same simple and good life, perhaps that above all, is why my father is such a good Dad, because he truly is and was in love with the woman who is our mom…

I am 46 years and seven months and nine days on this earth, and I have felt loved for every single one of them.  I have disappointed my parents several times in my life, and as much as I love my mom, those feelings of upsetting her, are not nearly as hard to bear as when I feel I have upset and disappointed my father…I have a constant “need” I guess, to want him to be pleased with me…I guess most women with a dad like mine, do, and I admit that is difficult, all the time, to feel that perpetual urge to “measure up,” and with every poor choice and bad decision I make, feel that I am again disappointing him, but the fact of the matter is that I know both my parents love me without condition, and so on this Father’s Day I want to say thank you to my Dad, for loving my mother, for loving me and my sister, and our children, and the daughters of my daughter, and for accepting all of us, even when we disappoint him, and loving us and being good to us, 365 days a year…year after year…