I wanted a daughter, while I was still young

Happy Father’s Day

Sometime on Father’s Day, I like to listen to The Suburbs by Arcade Fire, because Win Butler sings:

I want a daughter while I am still young

Hold her hand and show her some beauty before all the damage is done

And for a couple years, those lyrics made me tear up, because I wanted a daughter but my wife did not. Then one day, she said, “Still want to be a dad?” And now I am.

Before my daughter was born, I advised and counseled university students in residence halls.¹ Both the students I met during judicial meetings and the Resident Assistants I supervised would occasionally lie to me. And I would wistfully think, I wish I had a daughter that lied to me like these college girls. And now I do.

And on the many vacations to amazing geographic destinations², I would hold my wife’s hand, happy, but also, thinking, someday it’d be cool to return and show this sight to a kid of mine. And now I do.

I just got back from splashing in the Pacific with my kids. My daughter pushed my boys into the sand and lied when confronted. “I think the waves (100 feet away) knocked him down,” she said.

And the eight hour drive back home? Three kids screaming and poking each other in the back seat? I’m so glad my life turned out the way it did. Thanks, wife, for changing your mind and sticking around when the reality of parenting obliterated my foolish romantic fantasies of fatherhood. You’re the best.

Everyone else, Happy Father’s Day.

1. You drank too much and puked in the elevator some weekend? You met with me that next Monday to discuss how your actions negatively affected the community.

2. Like Meteora, Greece or Everywhere, Iceland