When I first found out that I was going to be a father, I decided it was time to think about which direction I wanted to head in my life. I knew the things I liked and had started building a career in that area, but I now had to add the additional component of supporting a family into my decisions.
I also had to decide what type of father I wanted to be. My dad tried, but I found that his way of teaching was more heavy-handed than I was ready for. Because of that, I was always afraid of my dad and wanted to try to correct that by being the understanding and lighter approach to being a father figure.
That idea seemed much better in my internal focus group than the actual outcome.
I had noticed that I had a bit of a temper at times, and I spoke with my kids about a safe word to use when they felt I was going too far. We decided on the word “kitty,” thinking it was benign enough not to be something that would confuse me in my angry state. For many years, it worked like it should, and I was able to keep my anger in check.
And then I didn’t.
One day, I lost my temper over something I cannot even remember, and my oldest son was cowering as I yelled at him. I heard him say the word that was supposed to de-escalate me, but I was so furious that I told him, “There is no kitty here!”
I am huge, over 6ft 7in tall, so I towered over him and was looking down at him cowered in the doorway, scared shitless, trying to understand why the safe word did not work as discussed.
At the time, it felt like all the work I had done to become a different kind of father had been reduced to rubble. But it hadn’t.
I had fucked up. And there is a difference.
I had decided years earlier what direction I wanted to go as a father. I wanted my boys to be able to talk to me. I wanted them to feel safe around me. I wanted to teach without using fear as the primary teaching tool. On that particular day, I went completely in the opposite direction.
The important part wasn’t pretending it didn’t happen. It wasn’t explaining why I was angry or convincing myself that whatever he had done justified my reaction. The important part was recognizing that I had gone somewhere I didn’t want to go. And then correcting my direction.
I think for much of my life I confused direction with destination. I thought deciding where I wanted to go meant drawing a straight line between where I was and where I wanted to be and then somehow staying perfectly on that line.
Life doesn’t seem particularly interested in straight lines.
I’ve changed careers. I’ve gone back to school. I’ve started businesses. I’ve watched my kids grow into adults and had to figure out how to be their father without trying to run their lives. I’ve had relationships change, jobs disappear, plans fall apart, and circumstances force me onto roads I absolutely did not intend to travel.
Some of those changes were choices. Some definitely were not. But direction is still something I get to choose.
I can’t change every circumstance that puts me somewhere I didn’t expect to be. I can, however, occasionally stop and ask myself a pretty simple question:
Am I still heading toward the person I want to be?
That question has become much more important to me lately.
I don’t have a five-year plan for every part of my life anymore. I’m not particularly interested in creating one. I know some of the things I want, and more importantly, I’m beginning to understand the direction I want to travel to get there.
I want to move toward the people I love, not away from them.
I want to spend more time experiencing things and less time convincing myself I’ll do them someday.
I want to keep creating, whether that’s taking photographs, writing this blog, building something completely unnecessary on a Raspberry Pi, or starting another project that seemed like a much better idea before I was six hours into it.
I want to keep learning. I want to laugh more. I want to have more adventures. I want to be a good father without believing that being a good father requires me to have all the answers.
I want to build a relationship where we continue moving toward each other while still having enough room to be ourselves.
And I want to become increasingly comfortable being the person I actually am instead of constantly trying to figure out who I’m supposed to be.
Those aren’t destinations. There isn’t going to be a sign somewhere announcing that I have arrived at being a good father, a good partner, a good photographer, or even a good person.
I’m going to screw some of it up. I’m going to miss turns. I’m probably going to occasionally head completely in the wrong direction. I’ve done it before. What matters is recognizing it.
That day with my son didn’t erase every good thing I had done as a father. It showed me that simply deciding what kind of father I wanted to be wasn’t enough. I had to keep paying attention to whether my actions were actually taking me in that direction.
Years later, my boys are adults. I can’t go back and change that day, and I certainly can’t pretend there weren’t other days when I got things wrong. But I can look at the relationship I have with them today. Maybe that’s the thing about direction. You don’t have to travel in a perfectly straight line. You just have to occasionally look up, figure out where the hell you are, and decide which way you want to go next.
And sometimes, you have to remember that there is always a kitty.