On This Father’s Day

Father’s Day, in many ways, has functioned as the most confusing day of the year for me because I both felt love from a man who fathered me and rejection from a man who was my father. The complexity of the day has always felt immense and affects me as a father, like an anxious, looming shadow—a presence sticking to me.  

It seems that some fathers are there, and some are just not.

From the age of almost two years old until adulthood, I’ve called my stepfather “dad.” Father’s Day has always been his day, and I’ve celebrated his love, his sacrifices, his duty to my mother and our family. Those Father’s Day cards were his cards, written illegibly at first, scribbled circles in crayon, and as I grew, those letters in my name took on proper shape and form, and so did my appreciation for him: his home cooked dinners, his ability to fix my car, and his unrelenting work ethic; a man working from four in the morning until six at night. These things do not define all dads, but define mine. In every way, he embodied fathering—a dutiful man who dedicated almost every moment to his family.

My stepfather immigrated from Panama to America when he was sixteen, a bright-green-eyed, husk-colored-skinned, curly-haired young man. He relocated from California to New Jersey in his twenties, acquired his commercial driving license, and became an eighteen-wheeler truck driver. He met a woman, a single mother with three children, when he was twenty-five. He married my mother at twenty-seven and vowed to love her and her children like his own.

He is sixty-two now—and though his brown skin is wrinkled, and there’s a patch of light scalp at the crown of his head, and his green eyes that used to glow so wildly have dulled some—he is still that beautiful man who made a better life in America, that man who never ceased on his promise to that woman, to her children, to God, that he was going to love them boundlessly, endlessly, unconditionally. 

Is this not what being a father means?

Each year, my biological father received a Father’s Day card from me that my mother picked out, signed in my name with her left non-dominant hand, mailed on her own volition—until I was old enough to not send them, and that was that.

On Father’s Day, my children choose a card for my stepfather and my wife’s father. I don’t explain to them the difference between a father and stepfather, for in my experience, “step” only meant “not blood,” “doesn’t look alike,” “different last names.” I don’t tell them that they have three grandfathers because what’s the point? How can they connect the word “grandfather” to someone they don’t even know—who they haven’t met? I don’t explain to them that there was a man who raised me, and a man who shares my last name. I didn’t understand it myself when I was their age. 

My children fold colored construction paper into a card, draw an array of crayon and marker illustrations: fish, trucks, tools, hearts; they write “To, G-Dad” and “To, PopPop” and tape hardware and sporting goods gift cards inside. My children give these men their Father’s Day cards, embrace them in wide arms, with wide grins, and celebrate the everyday relationships they have with them.

It seems that to be a grandfather, a good grandfather, you must first start with being a damn good dad. 

As much as I loved my stepfather, part of me always felt rejected by my biological father. I’ve tried to shake that feeling. But, like an allergy, every June, it found me—burrowing itself inside and growing into seasonal depression. I’d sulk in my thoughts. I’d resent what it meant to be a son, what it might mean to one day become a father—that I’d be unable to be a good dad when I didn’t have a real one of my own. And although my stepfather was the realest dad I knew, I was still just a stepson, and there would always be this distinction between us. 

I remember when I found out my wife and I were expecting our first baby. When I walked into our apartment, I was welcomed by balloons tied to a chair, to a chalkboard sign that read “37 Weeks Until Baby,” to my wife holding her phone, recording my response, to a beer mug that sat on the chair with a pregnancy test stick inside, the mug that said “#1 Dad,” and to the hat next to it, embroidered with “New Dad.” She watched from behind her phone in perfect glee, with a beauty that I had never seen before—an expecting-mother-glow with laughter, tear-shed. She could barely blurt out “We’re having a baby.” In that moment, I flushed with emotion as physical as a wave when it knocks me over—the celebration, and yet the sadness for a father relationship I never had. The thought, like water in the ear, crept in: “You’re going to be just like him, like your dad.” 

This year, on Father’s Day, I promised I’d be happy. I promised I wouldn’t glass-eye and drift into my thoughts. I wouldn’t stare in front of my cup of coffee, the new mug my wife and children bought me, the one with my kids’ faces on it—how the steam from the fresh-brewed roast billows and my kiddos try to blow it away like birthday candles, how they hug me around the neck while I’m trying to take sips, how they repeat, “Daddy can do whatever he wants today,” and then how they tickle and punch my stomach. On this Father’s Day, I promised my wife that I wouldn’t become this stand-in adult body of that young boy still mourning the absent love from his absent father. But it’s a goddamn challenge, I try to tell her, and I know it shouldn’t be. 

My wife and children give me every reason to feel loved, to feel appreciated, to feel needed. Every year, like every day, my family makes me feel like I’m special—that I’m their dad, that I’m her husband. But my wife cannot fully understand. Because she was raised by a good man, a world-class father, our PopPop. She doesn’t know what it means to feel unloved. And people like me, sometimes unloved children who grew into adults, into parents, know how these holidays—Father’s Day, Mother’s Day, anything celebrating family—can be a challenge. I know I am not the only one. 

I also recognize how lucky I am to have a stepfather who cared for me, who treated me like his own son. Too many sons and daughters didn’t have what I had, an imperfect but complete family, didn’t have anyone to whom to write hand-made cards, to be there when they needed them, to define the many different words in different languages for “dada” and “momma.” Hell, all of us still struggle with our parents no matter how amazing or how shitty they are. So why can’t I get over it? 

I’m thirty-eight years old. I still don’t understand why my father chose not to be present in my life. I don’t know if by the time I publish this my father will still be alive; he’s eighty-six years old. When he is not here anymore, will I regret not putting my foot forward to mend our relationship? Does it even matter at this point in my life? What kind of authentic relationship can I even have with him? Can he have with my children? 

My mother tells me to connect with him. She tells me my children are bigger now and should know their grandfather, all three grandfathers. I want to tell her that I will raise my children how I want—it’s my family—and that she should mind her business, but I don’t and change the subject. She simply wants me to forgive him and find happiness in what little time he has left—but Mom, it’s not that easy.  

My father doesn’t know my children, my wife, and barely knows me. I wonder, when he dies, how I will explain it to my children, that they have another grandfather who is in heaven or wherever people go when they die. Or do I tell them that their daddy has to leave the house and will be back later while I’m burying my dad? I don’t have the right answer, and I don’t want to try to figure it out. 

What I do know, what I have learned as both a son and as a parent, is that being a good father is showing up.  

On this Father’s Day, my family let me sleep in. It’s after seven, late for me. I wake up to the smell of freshly brewed coffee, my favorite morning scent. I’m wearing the slippers my children bought me at Christmas. I find the shirt I wore when they were born, and put it on. I go downstairs, and they’re impatiently waiting at the kitchen table with a giant, handmade card. They all yell “Happy Father’s Day!” and even our cat, sprawled across the floor, seems to meow Dad. I smile with all my teeth. I’ve been working on myself, letting go of things from the past, and smiling helps.

After eight years of being a parent, I’m beginning to learn that people like me, who were raised by sometimes absent parents, do not have to let our negative experiences shape how we parent. When we were young and tried to make meaning out of our little world, the most important relationships in our life—our connection with our parents—greatly influenced who we would become, but that does not dictate who we are. We can be great parents.

Father’s Day can be my day. My relationship with my father does not have to be codependent on the father I am—these two things can exist independently from each other. So this year, after drinking coffee, reading my cards, and opening my presents, my wife and children planned a day doing my favorite things.

We walk to the lake adjacent to our house: fishing poles, floaties, beach chairs, inflatables, snacks, and drinks. The sun stretches overhead, a cloudless sky, a breeze of summer heat, the smell of sunscreen, bug spray. Other families arrive and set up their lake gear too, coolers in the sand, kids building sandcastles. Dads are everywhere, some holding beer koozies that say “Dad” on them, some wearing “Best Dad” T-shirts, some shirtless: farmer tans, rounded stomachs, worn bodies. Most of all, these men look happy to be with their families on a beautiful June day. I want to be happy too. Not because I simply want to fit in, but because I want to recognize that my family appreciates me. This year, I, too, chose happiness.

We’re fishing, the line whizzing and snaking above bass and pickerel silhouettes. We’re swimming, lapping, splashing, playing Sharks and Minnows, the sun gently resting on our tan skin. We’re kayaking, taking turns rowing the paddle, coasting on the surface of the tinge-brown water. We’re picnicking on a blanket—peanut butter sandwiches, juice boxes, apples, and carrots. And while this is the perfect day and I hold on to each moment like snapping a photo, I know my father never experienced this type of joy with me. What I do not understand is why would any father, why would any parent, give this away? We have but one chance. We cannot do this again. And yes, I recognize it is not that simple. Life is not that easy, and my father’s absence likely depended on many variables. I don’t know. I am too stuck in my ways to discover why. I do not want to make amends, and I am old enough to be okay with that decision. But what I do believe, in my gut and in my bones, is that on Father’s Day, or on any given day, I would never give this up. It is not pity I feel for the man who helped create me, nor is it a thirty-year-old resentment for being absent, but it is the clearest motivation I have ever known—motivation to be the type of father I never had.