Father's Day

Today being Father's Day, I thought it might be appropiate to speak a little bit about my impending fatherhood status.

I'm not going to lie. There's a part of me that is down right terrified. Not a very large part, but it's there nonetheless. I'm not all that terrified because I have a pretty good template for fatherhood from my own father. He wasn't perfect, but I think he did an okay job raising me. I didn't turn out to be a complete sociopath (just a partial one), and I think I can be the father he was. Commanding of respect, but easy to love. Lenient, but not too lenient, and completely intolerant of bullshit (when it's detected...I won't lie again and say I never lied to him and got away with it, I totally did).

But a part of me is terrified because even though I have this template to go off of...I don't have my father around anymore. I can't get his counsel or ask him advice. I could ask my mother advice on basics, but not about fatherhood. It's a whole different ball of wax. Though, the fact that the Heir is a girl would have thrown him as much as me, I'm sure. I'm the youngest of three boys for him (two from a previous marriage), so there's a bunch of stuff he'd probably would have said "beats the hell out of me, go ask your mother." Not that she had any girls, either. But Dad's logic would have gone something like "female child advice = mother."

And due to general circumstances, I don't even have a father in law to turn to. Though I do have a mother in law to turn to when my mother makes no sense (which is more and more frequent, unfortunately).

So, I'm a bit of a kite in the wind when it comes to fatherhood. Don't get me wrong, I'm sure I'll get advice from the unlikeliest of places, but there's something a bit more reassuring to get it from your own father.

Happy Father's Day, Dad. Sorry you're gonna miss it...