Fathers Day 2022

19 Jun 2022

After finishing a recent book – Mouth to Mouth (verdict: “meh. ⭐⭐”) – I picked up Michael Ian Black’s “A Better Man: A (Mostly Serious) Letter to My Son” and dived in. I figured, hey it’s almost Father’s Day, so let’s see what this funny guy has to say. And as the title of the book says, yes - this really is a mostly serious piece of writing. He gets into the heavy stuff pretty quickly.

But that’s not why I’m writing this. There’s a bit in the first 10 or 20 pages where he explores the feeling of when he crossed into the realm of “manhood”:

Before I sat down to write this, I couldn’t have told you the moment I felt I’d crossed, irrevocably, into manhood.

…

It was when I drove my family home from the hospital for the first time.

…

I’ve never been more terrified than the moment I turned out of the parking lot.

This statement stopped me, and I let out a quiet, “heh”, chuckle.

Because this has been, almost verbatim, what I have shared with first-time parents through the past 7+ years that I’ve been a father. “No one prepares you for the moment you strap your child in that car-seat, and drive away. There was ‘you before’, and ‘you now’, there is no manual, so go figure it out.”

Happy Father’s day to all you Dads out there. I trust, and hope, that you are navigating those waters successfully. ❤️