Welcome to the Dad Diaries, where, every so often, I will write down whatever is coming up in my life as a father of now two children. My son turned two today. It’s taken me nearly two years to truly feel like a Dad.
TALLAHASSEE, Florida — I have had a lot of goals and ambitions in life. Virtually all have faded, as the image of what success now looks like to me became clear as day one afternoon in Tallahassee.
I had just pulled up at home, returning from Florida State University, where I am an assistant beach volleyball coach. As I stepped out of my Kia Telluride, I heard the sound that liquified my heart in an instant, melting it into a puddle.
“DADDO!” squealed my chunky, soon to be 2-year-old boy. The squeal was punctuated by the pitter-patter of his little feet hitting the sidewalk as he charged towards me, arms out, supercharged smile on his face, eventually slamming into my chest for a post-work hug.
Any semblance of personal ambition died in that instant.
That moment is now the best part of my day, every day.
What on Earth could be more important than this?
I can’t think of a single thing.
This wasn’t always the case.
Haircuts with my son
I became a dad two years ago, but I didn’t feel like a capital D Dad until, essentially, these past few months.
It still feels strange — a touch shameful, really — but on the day Austin was born, I felt…disappointed? I was told it would be magical. That suddenly the world would shift on its very axis, and I’d suddenly be enlightened with a fresh new perspective. A real Saul to Paul moment, if you will.
Instead, I felt, in a word, useless.
Useless during the delivery, in which my wife, the person I love most in the world, was in a level of pain I’ll never be able to comprehend. And I could do nothing about it.
Useless when Austin cried, as was often the case, because he wasn’t crying for me; he wanted and needed Mom. Useless when he woke up in the middle of the night, as was often the case, because he didn’t cry for Dad for comfort and soothing; he wanted and needed Mom. Sure, I could change diapers, and yes, I knew that my son needed my financial providing and just didn’t know it.
Still: There had to be something more I was missing, right?
I’d always thought that being a Dad would be my greatest calling in life, but the reality, I soon realized, is that becoming a Dad to an infant is to essentially become Mom’s Personal Assistant. There’s nobility in that, I know, and that’s why a marriage is, to me, the most important relationship in your life, but the unmet expectation of what becoming a Father would feel like left me something I can only describe as disappointed.
Which felt, in a word, terrible. I resented myself for feeling like that.
Soon, part of me viewed my son, and my new enigmatic role in my family’s life, as a distraction to my own personal ambitions. I resented the lack of sleep I was getting, for it interfered with my sublime morning routine of walking on the beach and sipping coffee and reading and writing until, four hours later, it was time to go back to the beach and coach. Now I was underslept, changing diapers in the middle of a story, losing the free time I so prized as the fuel to my creative endeavors.
When I look back on it, there’s a word to describe what I was during the first chapter of my son’s life: selfish.
I wasn’t, I realize now, ready to give up my own personal ambitions to become the man that life was now demanding of me. I wanted everything but wanted to give up nothing, which reminds me of a wonderful bit of advice my good friend Gabby Reece once told me: “You can have everything you want, just not all at once.”
I just wasn’t ready to understand it as it related to me.
Until the afternoon that changed everything.
Soon, I was going into work not in relief that I could alas continue climbing whatever ladder it is I sought to climb that day, but excited to get back, so I could play basketball and volleyball and draw trash trucks with chalk and walk around the pond and watch monster truck videos on YouTube with my boy.
It was in those afternoon and early evening hours with my son, three to four hours between when I returned from work and when we ate dinner, that I had that big epiphany moment so many have when their children are born: This was the magic of being dad.
This was my world being flipped upside down.
This, in the end, was the death of personal ambition.
I had everything I ever wanted, all at once.
I was Dad.
While I had been Dad for almost two years, I hadn’t felt like it until, essentially, now.
My 20s and early 30s were hellbent on ladder climbing. I wanted, as Reece put it, everything all at once: I wanted to be the best beach volleyball player, the best commentator, the best writer. I wanted to be given the premium assignments. I’m still driven, and I think it’s important to be an example of hard work to my children. But does getting a better commentating assignment or getting a piece featured in a bigger magazine more important than spending time with my kids?
No.
All of those achievements are nice, yes, but what are they when compared to hearing the giggles of your son, the cooing of your daughter? What could compare to hearing your son ask to hold your daughter’s hand during prayers at dinner? Or sitting and eating berries on the kitchen floor with your son every night? Or spiking balloons and volleyballs, until it’s time to play basketball, then baseball, then back to volleyball, until it’s time to read books and do the bath and bedtime thing?
Nothing compares.
It all makes what I do now, coaching beach volleyball at Florida State, the perfect place for my family and I. My “boss” and good friend, Brooke Niles, is a mother to three boys who my son worships. They live right down the street. Her husband, Nick Lucena, is the other assistant. They understand the importance of family life. We spend our late afternoons and early evenings with our kids. They’ll encourage my wife, Delaney, to bring Austin and our daughter, Harper, to practice. Earlier today, the girls gathered around and sang him happy birthday. A few of them — gems, all of them — got him trash trucks and Hot Wheels as gifts.
I spent almost an entire work day with my family.
What more is there to want?
Kids, Ryan Holiday once wrote on his newsletter, the Daily Dad, aren’t a distraction from your job.
They are the job.
They are the calling.
bedtime stories
