Friedman: A son-in-law comes late to fatherhood - Burlington County Times
Columnist
An image comes rushing back to me from years ago. I am watching a tall man with broad shoulders as he leans down to hold the back of a little girl’s bicycle, a two-wheeler, to be precise. She is terrified. He is steady and sure.
Suddenly, she gets it. She lets him let go of the back of that bicycle and she sails off into the wind with a look on her face that’s difficult to describe. It’s one of awe, relief, apprehension and deep pleasure. The same look is on the man’s face.
That man is our son-in-law David, and the child is his daughter Carly, our seventh grandchild. The scene is so ordinary and so extraordinary. It is a portrait of a father.
Carly is seventeen years old now. Her interests reach well beyond bikes. But whatever they are, David is there for her and for her big sister Emily, as he has been since their births.
I’ve seen that look of protection, some worry, and so much pride on David’s face so many times now. And there is also occasional anger or disappointment when something goes wrong. I saw the opposite at Carly and Emily’s baby naming's, when their father seemed to feel the holiness and impact of being a Jewish father.
David and Amy came late to parenting. David’s first experience with fatherhood came when he was 40. It was a cold, dreary December day, Friday the 13th, no less, when he reached out his arms to hold firstborn Emily.
All of the father-firsts were enclosed in Emily’s early months of life and David was predictably a rookie. Being older doesn’t change the overwhelming sense of responsibility that begins the moment that cry rings out in the delivery room, and suddenly a man morphs into a father.
David was raw, anxious, and ever-so-determined to get it exactly right. He’d read those “what to expect” books, he’d listened to seasoned dads and bonded with them, and Amy and David’s Manhattan apartment quickly became Emily Center.
He soon learned to recognize the difference between a hungry cry and a bored “I need attention” wail. With Carly, baby number two, David, the brainy psychoanalyst, showed that now he could experience fatherhood without questioning each and every move his daughters made. Dr. Freud had yielded to pure instinct, and instinct proved quite reliable.
When Amy and David arrived for a weekend with us in those early years, I would sometimes stop in my tracks to watch him making endless trips from garage to house to improvised nursery. This was a man who, a few years earlier, would be off to the basketball court for a quick pick-up game, or off on a jog.
There was not too much basketball or five-mile jogs in those early days of fatherhood. Instead, it was days of endless daddy stuff. Games of checkers and primitive tennis and much more.
Recently I watched six foot two David settle into a rocking chair and delight in being the sole audience for a play his daughters had created. It might have been a Broadway opening, such was his rapt attention. I was seeing my son-in-law, the dad, doing the simple, spectacular things that dads do without fanfare.
He may not be younger-than-springtime as he does them. But now David is in the universe of fatherhood, bound up in a love that is of a different order from any other.
I can only wish him more. More astonishment. More sense of wonder. More giddy shock. And more of the deep pleasure of looking into his daughters’ faces and having the world slip away.
Sally Friedman is a freelance writer. Contact her at [email protected].
source: https://www.burlingtoncountytimes.com/story/news/2021/12/05/sally-friedman-son-law-comes-late-fatherhood/8851299002/
Your content is great. However, if any of the content contained herein violates any rights of yours, including those of copyright, please contact us immediately by e-mail at media[@]kissrpr.com.