I am Dad.

I had been sensing it for a little while and then I got this note when my wife and girls went on a weekend trip without me. Dad. There it is. Not Daddy. Dad. And this from my younger daughter!

I wrote a blog back in January of 2020 titled “I am Daddy” as I came to the realization that this was no longer just a role I was compelled to play because I had children but a part of my identity – in fact, it was the primary way I finally saw myself despite years of having children.

Now, officially according to this note, I am Dad. So, what does this mean?

1. I am still Daddy, but I have to know when and how to use it. As both Dad and Daddy I toe a delicate line between being a doting father who desperately loves his girls and the man who needs to prepare them to be teens, to have the confidence to make their own choices, to recognize when rules and norms are important and when they don’t work for our family values and priorities.
2. I am the example and the standard of being a man. In one of the first conversations I had when we were pregnant with my first daughter, a colleague said: “you are the first man she will ever love.” Aside from any presumed preferences for who she will romantically love, the point hit hard and still holds profound meaning for me today. I am their most acute - if not only - example of what it means to be a Dad, to be a Husband, to be a Son, to be a man who respects the women in my life fully and completely and without compromise.
3. I am the hard conversation they don’t yet know they want or need. So, I must be the first to be vulnerable and say when I have made a mistake or mishandled a situation with them. In turn, I must also be the first to tell them the hard truth regardless of any awkwardness so that they can trust they can come to me no matter how confusing or awkward life gets to them.
4. I am the unconditional love that ends every night with the declaration that I love them always and forever, no matter what. I must be stability as the tumultuous teens take their inevitable toll.
5. And, if I do all of these things with any reasonable level of quality, I can continue to be safety. This includes the safety of Daddy but is deeper and more complex and more evolved to meet their growth and development as young women.

I am Dad. I am someone who sees them as beautiful inside and out in all the ways I used to think were cliché and corny. I am the one who must know and show them that their value is inside, that their inner beauty is controllable and not merely a function of surface perception or genetics. The beauty they control is the one that is most profound and can also last a lifetime. 

I am Dad. I am a man who must never and will never comment on women’s bodies, their weight, their looks, or demean them in any way. I have to know and accept and defy implicit gender bias including my own that they don’t yet recognize or have words for.

I am Dad. I am someone who genuinely finds them fun and funny to be around and am at my happiest when I am with them. I don’t want to experience new things without sharing them with my girls.

I am Dad. I am someone they miss on a weekend away and someone who misses them.

I am Dad. I am someone who allows them to give me the bird when I’m goading them about something in good fun because I know they are finding their confidence and showing their trust in me as they lightly test the boundaries (by doing something I undoubtedly taught them).

I am Dad. I am someone who above all else must show my girls that I am willing to listen without judgment or shame, no matter what the topic.

I am Dad. I am someone who must know the time for answers and the time for more questions to help them arrive at their own answers.

I am Dad, and I love it so, so, so much.

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