Empty Handed Dads
One crime of modern fatherhood is a familiar image to us all. Another dad, just like any of us, is out and about with the kids. It could be at the park or the playground, in a cafe, restaurant or the pool. The kids are peering around drinking in every detail around them, making sense of the world with equal parts curiosity and caution. They watch, wonder, play and perform, seeking recreation and recognition for feats both daring and endearing.
They peer up at dad, looking for that simple smile that tells them that, yes, they are truly adored and as accomplished as they feel in the given moment. But alas, their father fails to notice, his eyes locked upon his phone in a transfixed stupor, reading, checking, posting or liking something, anything, that isn’t the irreplaceable moment he just missed right before him.
This missive isn’t written from a perspective of moral superiority or puritanism. It is in some ways an act of penance, seeking absolution and a new start. I’ve been just as guilty as anyone else, but I’ve spent some months now trying damn hard to simply be present, focused, alive and aware of the moment I’m sharing with my children.
More and more, I’ve been determined to turn up empty handed, ready and responsible for them as a father who is not distracted and dismayed to be drawn away from any number of different ‘feeds.’ There is a veritable feast before us, in colour, light, love and locution and we dare to turn away for a fickle fiction, so detached and irrelevant from our own life and breath that we forget who we are and what we’re called to be.
Get into the habit of turning the damn things off. Set aside times and territories where your phones, tablets and laptops will never bare their garish light before your loved ones. Look upon the faces, the features, the tiny fingers and mischievous smiles of the children who’ll be grown up and gone before you know it. Turn towards the woman you adore instead of leering at the pixellated ones you could never truly love, know and cherish like you do her.
Turn up empty handed, bereft of distraction and delay, ready to give yourself physically, intellectually and emotionally to the family you should be ready to live and die for. Learn to read the world before you for meaning, purpose, guidance and inspiration. Remember how to fall in love with the people and the works that you can touch, taste, smell and see within your own line of sight. Follow them. Follow them through as they lead to to the next delight, the next revelation, the unseen corners and unknown spaces of the world you never truly inhabited.
Gather your children up in your arms, letting the memory of you face down in a phone fade into nonexistence. Likewise, huddle not around a backlit screen with your brothers in arms and best of friends. Remember how to revel in laughter, irreverence, presence, labour, food and drink. Look them in the eyes and clap them on the backs, present, alive and aware of all there is to see and hear.
Turn up empty handed, ready and prepared to go where the beauty of this world and the one you love want to take you. Turn up empty handed, ready to have to and hold every given moment, every soul upon this earth that crosses your path, with a romance, presence and benevolence that is befitting every single one of us. Especially the ones we bring into the world ourselves.