I spent most of my life believing with full sincerity—and what I thought was total self-awareness—that I would never become a father.
In the early years of my adulthood, when I was teaching young students to write, I could often be heard saying that my time in the classroom working with young people was more than enough. Later, after I’d stopped teaching, I became Uncle G to my brother’s three children, and I thought: that’ll do quite nicely, thank you. And for some time, it did.
But then, at 36 years old, I had the great good fortune to be at the hospital when a very old and very dear friend emerged from the delivery room. “It’s a boy,” he announced, with more newness and wonder and terror and transformation than I ever thought three words could express. In his eyes I saw what felt like a universe of feelings and ideas… and I was instantly overcome with the desire to enter that universe myself.
I denied it for several years: I was not, perhaps, quite ready to accept so sudden and sharp a revision to my own plans for my life. But eventually I surrendered to the truth, and three years ago today I was completely overtaken by Porter Karl Suilebhan: my complicated but total joy.
On the day he was born, I became a father… but in some sense, I am always becoming a father anew every day. The challenges I face in caring for him grow continually more complex and demanding. In the first days and weeks of his life, we struggled mightily, like all parents, to parse his cries, learning which meant the need for food and which meant exhaustion… but that task seems incredibly simple now in retrospect, having long since had to do everything from teaching Porter how to dress himself to explaining the nature of death after the loss of our cat Helen.
Becoming a father has taught me things I don’t think I could have learned from any other experience. About myself, about my own childhood, about my parents, about adulthood, about leadership. These are new lessons for me: still a bit ineffable, but real nonetheless.
(I’m not sure whether these are lessons one can learn without becoming a parent. Some have rebuked me for saying that; perhaps I’m wrong. I would counter that I think there are also probably lessons one can’t learn without, say, completing some great feat of physical exertion like climbing Kilimanjaro… or from living through tremendous tragedy… or from years of meditation… or from a thousand different other human achievements. Parents aren’t superior to non-parents, in other words, at least not to me; we just earn a different merit badge.)
For the first couple of years of Porter’s life, his presence affected my work as a writer in ways I am sure I will continue unpacking for a long time. Lately, though, I’ve begun to notice more subtle influences on the rest of my theatrical career, as a devising artist, performer, collaborator, and blogger. And it’s troubling me.
I’ve begun to see the whole theatrical world through the lens of parenthood, whether I want to or not… and I know that’s neither fair nor accurate. I have less tolerance for melodrama than ever before. I feel alienated from my fellow practitioners, whose schedules for rehearsing and devising and meeting are often completely out of sync with the demands of parenthood. I’m lonesome at times; in my worst moments, I feel like nobody else (in the theater) understands me or hears me. And I’m painfully, constantly aware of all my shortcomings; I have a sense about my work as an artist and advocate that I’m barely meeting every challenge, if not sometimes falling short… which is exactly how I feel about raising my son more often than I’d like to admit.
I’m really a mess sometimes!
(I keep it a secret, but it’s true.)
And yet… I own that I chose to be a parent. Nobody forced becoming a father on me. In addition, I am also well aware that (particularly within the theatrical community) I’m privileged to be ABLE to be a parent. The economic and social constraints of art-making are real and hard. Not everyone who wants to be a parent can be. And my heart goes out to those whose dreams are—temporarily, I hope—deferred.
And the truth is that for all of its difficulties, parenthood is still (forgive the hackneyed phrasing) the single greatest thing I’ve ever done or (I expect) will do. The transformations I’m experiencing (and still trying to figure my way through) will in time come to seem smaller and less important: I have faith in that. I’ll get a handle on them, or they’ll get a handle on me, and I’ll become a new person.
And in the meantime, I take great consolation from the small miracles of becoming a father: the moment I finally figure out how to whisper my son into eating green beans; his unasked-for kiss when I drop him off at day care; our daily morning hour of Lego and Play-Doh and making stuff and laughing together. Together, they more than make up for the pains of the rough unfolding of the new me I’ve been experiencing of late. In fact, they’re everything I ever wanted. I just SO glad I finally figured out I wanted them!
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Lots of traffic to this post today, for which I am VERY grateful. You have no idea how the feeling of so many people streaming into this post can affect this playwright’s feelings of isolation.
While I’m adding this update, I also wanted to take a moment to acknowledge the beautiful photography of my friend Teresa Castracane, whose photograph of me and and my son graces this blog post. She’s the best!
Well said, my friend. The one thing I seem to continually learn is that it gets worse–in a beautiful way. Daily, I struggle with the selfish desire to want to freeze time so that my boys remain forever the bright, beautiful, innocent, and curious wonders that I know them to be. I want to keep them safely sheltered under my wing. But I know the price of parenthood is that someday I will have to let them loose…to explore and learn…to find happiness and hurt…to find love beyond what Maureen and I provide. I have to admit that I get a little sad thinking of that day because I just can’t get enough of the things we do now…the bed-time reading, the refrigerator art, the phrase ‘Dad, guess what?’ It’s been so amazing–and I wish it were eternal. I’m just so glad that you are experiencing too.
This comment is a lovely gift from an old friend I haven’t seen in far too long. SO glad to hear from you… and to hear from you in such an eloquent way. Boy, do I share your anxiety about that future… I’m glad you’re heading into that territory before me to pave the way! 🙂
Papa G – I’m right there with you, as you know, with my 2 yr old boy. It’s a brave new and terrifying world we have entered but it’s rewards more than make up for it. From the small bits of time that we’ve worked together and from what I know of you, I know you are a good man and I am more than sure that you are a great father. As fathers of the arts, it’s tough and I’m totally with you on the difficulties of being a father and try to maintain the crazy schedules that theatre demands. But you’ve been doing it. I’ve found that passion will make you find a way to make things work. Whether that passion be for you your wife, your kid, or theatre or all of the above. You find a way to make it all gel. Sure, sometimes there have to be trade-offs but that does not mean you love one more than the other, or maybe it does, but you find a way to make it all work. For me, I don’t know how much longer I’ll be able to juggle family life and actor life. I love them both but I value my time with my boy too much to keep sacrificing my time with him. But my passion for acting will always be there. For the sake of rambling, I’ll cut it short here but thank you for this. It’s comforting to know at least one other daddy out there who feels the same things I am. Stay strong. From what I hear, it only gets worse! In a good way of course.
Thanks for that, Steve. One day our two kids are gonna hang together and play together and we’re gonna sit back (NOT smoking cigarettes) and marvel at how far we’ve made it. It’s gonna be great! 🙂
This really touched my heart, G. I only wish we had had kids at the same time and could’ve shared going through this together!
Having had kids early in life I too often felt alone, confused, and yes, like no one else in the theater understood or heard me, or even cared. Years later, I now see no one wished me ill will — everyone was simply involved in their own lives, their own drives.
I also see now that my kids completely overwhelmed me. Not because they were overly needy or difficult, but because I felt such an overwhelming responsibility to take care of them. And those needs and drives, of course, competed directly with my own needs and drives to create, to think, to make things.
That conflict — kids and work, being a good father, being a good artist — exist to this day for me. Part of it is my own perfectionism — something I work at weaning myself from. Some of it is just built in to wanting to do two difficult things well.
(Carey Perloff’s recent Howlround piece nicely touches on some of this).
I will say this, though. The time I gave to my two kids, perhaps to the detriment of any kind of “career” (and yes, I gave it willingly, and yes I was enormously lucky to have children), is paying me back a million-fold now that they’re grown up. I have two amazing friends — smart, interesting, funny — who grow me in ways I could never grow on my own. Never expected that. And I’m hugely grateful for it.
The little I know of what you do with Porter, the wonderful father you seem to be, G, makes me think you’ll be saying the same, 20 years hence.
Boy, I hope so… because that sounds like exactly the kind of relationship I’d like to have with Porter one day. It’s very reassuring to read your story. I, too, give whatever I give willingly and happily, though not without disorientation at times; I expect I’ll get my balance back one day, to be sure. And oh, yes, do I wish we’d had kids at the same time — that would have been great!
Thank you for this
My friend, you are very welcome!
Hey,
Thanks for this. You’ve managed to express a lot of the things I’ve felt since my wife and I had our boy. It’s a strange and wonderful new world but one that come with a whole new set of rules and a totally different lifestyle. Our boy Max, I love that kid so much I think my chest might explode, for about 6 months or so I think I went through a kind of mourning period for my old life. It’s not that I regretted it, it’s just that the world is different now. I can’t be that person anymore,and sometimes my instincts don’t catch up to my reality so quick. That being said, I’m getting there and really loving it.
Here’s hoping that your “new” life brings you new instincts and a new explosive reality!
Thank you. Less than a month ago, I found out I was going to be a dad. Even writing this, I can’t believe it’s me saying this!
Jesse
http://www.jessewilsonproductions.com
Congratulations! Here’s to perfect health, many discoveries, and much happiness and prosperity.