On being Dad...

Yesterday was Father's Day, 2012.

I became a father on October 31st, 1996 at 1:39 in the morning.  That is when my stillborn daughter Angel Cherub Lohman was born at rest.  I can't say I started celebrating the day until 2000 when my sone Sean Andrew, whom I've mentioned many times in this volume, was born on January 22nd of that year.  Chronologically speaking though, for 16 years I have been a member in good standing of the "dad club".

Do I consider myself lucky to be a father?  Yes, absolutely.  Not to put myself out above and beyond other dads (or my own for that matter) but as it happened, I have a greater respect for the job of fatherhood than most guys do, mainly because of my daughter.  If she had lived she would have likely been born in December 1996 and be approaching 16 this year. 

In 1996, I learned that having a child is a gift and not a "function" and it should be treated as such.  You can't take it for granted.  I had an idealized notion of what it meant to be a dad through my youth because my dad was so good at it.  If he were here he'd very likely disagree, (he passed away in 2002), but from the guy who enjoyed being his son as much as I did, he was built bred and corn fed to be a dad and he did the job extremely well, and I did not make it easy on the old man.

It's not that dad and I were at odds through my youth, and I was not in any way rebellious, it's just that now I realize how much I likely disappointed him.  I was an underachiever before it became fashionable to be one, I wasn't a great athlete, and I fell short of many of the goals I'm sure he had set for me.  It's easy to admit that now that he's gone but I knew it long ago. 

I don't make excuses for the way life has done me, or more pointedly, how I've done life.  I made my mistakes and have not denied ownership.  Not because that's the way my dad would have wanted me to be, but because he made me understand that it was the right way to do things.  I was the kid who invariably learned the hard way, but with no more severe consequences than being grounded or being yelled at.  Some of my friends were not so fortunate and made things a lot more difficult fopr their dads, so in a way, discipline-wise I was easy on my dad becuase of the footprints he left on me.

So as this father's day comes and goes with my son Sean at my side, I wonder what, if any, footprints I am leaving with him.  Long before even his older sister was born I had a set of things I wanted my children to go to sleep and wake up with, and that is that no matter how mad I get at them, or frustrated I seem their father's love would always be there.  They should never be afraid to ask me for anything, and to own what they do in life, good or bad.

Sean's autism makes trying to visualize then future for him that much more foggy.  His mother, from whom I am divorced, can tell me 18 different ways from next Wednesday that he thinks I hang the moon, but there is always that intangible that the disorder brings.  He has challenges in his life that make mine seem petty by comparison, but thus far he's met them with a smile on his face and joy in his heart, and I couldn't ask for anything more than that.

So to my Dad, out there in the great unknown, beyond time and space, I say Happy Father's Day, and that I love you.  You did a great job in helping me become who I am.  Thank you for everything.

Dedicated to Thomas R. Lohman, Sr.  11/3/1941- 05/24/2002