Pater Familias … because I'm your FATHER!

The Place Just Right

November 17, 2009 · Activities | Glad Dad

Is fathering better than you dared to hope?

With Kid, Life’s A Bigger, Better Beach

People are surprised at how long Minerva and I waited before we became three.

We were years and years deliberately childless, then had more years wanting and waiting, to the point that we were well into Plan B), prepping for adoption, when TahDah! Girl Child showed up.   

After I laid out the timeline for my best Unsuburb buddy, also a sometime work-at-home dad with two boys, he asked me, sounding very wistful, “In all those years, didn’t you two have so much fun?” 

We did, we surely did, much of it fun we could not have now, for reasons fiscal, practical, responsible.  

Still, as I say to my friend, “It’s better now.”

I don’t say more, because I’m not cool with gushing out loud. 

Better to do it silently, like driving home on Sunday after 4.5 hours at the beach.  

The day, in retelling, seems not much. We got a late and unpromising start, pushing noon under a cloud deck and GC complaining because she’d rather play with a friend, any friend, than go.

But then we busted out of the Unsuburb and onto the five-lane and got happy. Not because the sun broke out or, God knows, because of glorious North Jersey, but because there we were again, we three, us, and our dog, too, with some time and a world to make ours and nobody else’s.

And it was just damn perfect.

We went to the closest big-deal beach, Sandy Hook, and stretched our hours there past sundown, acting on a sudden, last-minute need to make a moated sand castle, then decorate it to Girl Child’s specs with clam shells and a sort of shell fence around the moat. Not so bad, considering that we hurried and had no digging tools.

As we put on the finishing touches, the rising tide broke over a near-shore bar and a toungue of cold seawater licked within a yard of the castle. We last saw it in the blue-gray gloaming.

The castle wouldn’t last another 15 minutes. We loved it more because it wouldn’t.

Minerva and Girl Child conked on the Parkway, and I drove listening to not-so-girly snoring. With my females in the car, wakefulness and competence became sacred taking-care. I was Dad and never -- not ever, not anywhere -- more fulfilled and happy.

Your turn, Ace. Aren't some of these dumb little daddy moments better than anything? 

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