Why "Father's Day" Doesn't Mean That Much to Me - A Divorced Father's Reawakening

This week; in acknowledgement of Father's Day, Girls Rule! will feature stories written by fathers. Please enjoy this series.

Why "Father’s Day" Doesn’t Mean That Much to Me
By Joel Schwartzberg

Joel Schwartzberg is a nationally-published personal essayist and author of The 40-Year-Old Version, an award-winning collection of essays about fatherhood. He has three children — a son and twin daughters.

Father’s Day — at least as Hallmark and Wikipedia define it — doesn’t mean all that much to me, even though being a dad is one of the most important jobs I have.

For one thing, consider Father’s Day’s most obvious icons: golf-themed ice cream cakes, unmatchable gift ties and greeting cards that emphasize our laziness, our inattentiveness or our proximity to senility. June’s third Sunday is not so much a celebration of dads as it is a snarky toast to the lesser parent.

I personally celebrate Father’s Day every Saturday. My kids — a son, 9, and twin 6-year-old girls — and I call it “Lazy Dadurday”; the courts call it “shared custody.” But in many ways my fatherhood was born years after my three children were. My divorce forced me to be the dad I am, a separate entity from the dad everyone from my ex-wife to Dr. Phil expected me to be.

Last Father’s Day, about a year into my separation, I felt like the parental version of the former planet Pluto, suddenly demoted and now orbiting at the farthest, coldest point. I couldn’t tell if I was fathering my children well. I couldn’t even tell if they were loving me back.

But one night in my apartment, while one of my daughters was snuggling to sleep with her “sniff shirt” (a worn blouse my ex-wife routinely packed for her), her twin sister looked up at me with her big, almost completely round eyes and asked for a “daddy sniff shirt.”

I was about to grab one off a hanger, then opted for the hamper.

She brought the t-shirt to her nose, took in a deep smell and crinkled her nose.

“Too stinky?” I asked.

“No. I like it.”

Seeing her asleep with her daddy sniff shirt pressed to her face was the beginning of my re-education and re-empowerment as a father. It helped me realize that my children have one and only one dad, no matter what happens. That they have two homes: one with their mom and one with their dad. That they don’t just visit me; they live with me.

That day, even in its waning hours, became my first true Father’s Day.

I’ve since developed a fully grown inner dad, one who tells me when it’s OK to let my son stay up late, and when it’s not; when it’s appropriate to be interrupted on the phone by a whining daughter, and when it’s not; when a tense situation calls for stern rules, or just an all-out, no-shoes family wrestling match.

My inner dad tells me I don’t have to entertain my children with amazing spectacles every weekend. We sleep late on Saturday mornings and chomp homemade pancakes while watching kid movies on the DVR. We have scavenger hunts at Kmart, vote on car radio stations and play UNO until we’re all bleary eyed and their small fingers are tired from holding massive fans of cards.

Every so often I dump a soft hill of brown and black dress socks over their heads like leaves, and they delight in matching and folding them. My girls in particular love organizing my vitamins into their little plastic rooms in my pillbox. They approach the task with the focus of FDA scientists.

Under my watch, my kids learned how to pet an old cat, how to toss a Frisbee, and how charcoal needs to form a tight pyramid to keep its heat. Sure, we go to the movies from time to time and do other extravagant things, but we do them at our own pace, at our own discretion and for no other reason than that we all enjoy doing them together.

Once, on the drive back to their mother’s house, my girls played with two animal dolls in the back of the car.

"This one will be the mommy, and this one will be the baby," one said.

"But where is the daddy?" the other asked innocently, as she does all things.

"It’s OK. They can be divorced."

At a red light, I glanced in the mirror over at my son. With his sixth sense, he instinctively looked up from his Goosebumps novel.

I said impulsively and assuredly, "Nothing makes me happier than being your dad.”

As the light turned green, my son smiled and gave the most deeply satisfying and affirming reply I could hope for.

"I know."

A Dad's View: Learning to Ride a Bike - Nudge or Let it Happen?

This week; in acknowledgement of Father's Day, Girls Rule! will feature stories written by fathers. Please enjoy this series.

Learning to Ride a Bike - Nudge or Let it Happen?
by Mark Trainor

I remember exactly when I learned to ride a bike. I was six, and I made it from the garage to the backyard without training wheels. A great memory. My wife doesn't know exactly when she learned. I think that difference explains how we felt about helping our daughter learn to ride a bike. I didn't believe it was going to happen without some nudging, she thought it was a matter of just letting it happen.

Balancing on two wheels is a pretty improbable thing for anyone to do, much less a seven-year-old. As a parent, it reminded me of her walking, nighttime potty training and swimming. You struggle to keep the anxiety out of your voice when you say, "You'll get it, honey. Really you will." It's just hard to see the steps that are going to move her from not knowing how to knowing. And not all kids get it at the same time. Our daughter has friends who've been riding on two wheels since PreK. Did they learn early because their parents effectively nudged them toward it or because their parents just let it happen?

I don't know what I imagined would happen if she never learned to ride a bicycle. A circle of children pointing and laughing? An awkward silence when the question inevitably came up in her Harvard admissions interview? Not being able to take a bicycle tour through Napa Valley with a future partner? Not my daughter!

There are a few different ways to teach a kid to ride. You can do the training wheels, bending them up more and more until they're unnecessary. Sounds great in theory, didn't work for us in practice. You can lower the seat so her feet can touch the ground flat and let her coast downhill until she gets her balance right. Depends on how hilly the area you live in is. We had to settle for a flat length of sidewalk. And what we always hung up on was that first launching, that leap of faith that is pushing hard enough on one pedal to achieve the speed needed to balance at the risk of a bruising fall. When I looked at it from her point of view, I wouldn't have been too eager either.

Throughout summer we suggested, as gingerly as possible, playing on the bike. We tried everything, and were still left, as winter settled in, without much progress. My wife and I watched as she sheepishly teetered and made endless adjustments to the position of the leading pedal. As she grew more and more frustrated, I said, "Come on, one big push." My wife said, "Maybe we should take a break." I conceded and turned toward the house. My daughter didn't. With one somewhat-large push, she lurched forward and managed to get her feet on the pedals for two rotations, after which she caught herself before she fell over. Amid whoops and cheers, she tried two more times without as much success. The last time she pushed the bike to the ground and stormed inside.

There weren't many chances to ride over the snowy East Coast winter. It was months before she said she wanted to try her bike. I hauled it out of the garage, got the helmet and returned to the scene of the autumn's frustration. How long would it take, I wondered, to even get back to that point where she'd been willing to take the leap of faith just those couple of times? She climbed on, dithered over how her pedals were positioned, and picked up right where she'd left off. Two full rotations, then she caught herself from falling. I should have cheered or clapped, but I was a little stunned. And then she rode down the block. When her mom came home she showed her again and again (and again and again...)

I'm not ready to embrace the "just let it happen" philosophy entirely. Someone has to say, "Hey, remember that bicycle in the garage?" Someone has to say, "Try again." But I realize now that when it comes to leaps of faith, I ought to have taken my own advice. Beneath her fear and frustration — which were more than evident through those months — was a process far less evident: a simple coming together of coordination, determination and confidence, a private schedule that will not be hurried. You just have to keep offering the opportunity — that's the nudge — and bring your faith that however improbable it seems, it someday will just happen.


Mark Trainer is a writer who lives in Washington, DC with his wife and two children. He is working on a collection of short stories about fatherhood. You can follow him on Twitter at @marktrainer.