Father's Day 2021

🧔🏻‍♂️ Father's Day.
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It is perhaps a less complicated holiday for me, but not without the thoughtful, concerned gazing into the empty space of a room; eyes blurred and mind filled with the ideas of fatherhood; my own father, his father, and how I'm a father and will be once again, soon.
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Across the room I see my son and feel the frantic energy of him jamming the buttons of his Nintendo radiate into me. He's awake and alive and one of the most beautiful things I've ever seen.
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He got up at 6:45a, rode his bike to donuts, waited until they opened, ordered a dozen, and then biked back., "I got you a card, too," he said, laughing, as we inspected the donuts, chocolate smeared all over the box from the jostling of the ride, "but I didn't sign it or anything."
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The last few years have tested the two of us; him finding his space and identiy as a teenager with divorced parents in the modern world: stuck mostly behind a screen both by choice and pandemic. All year, I would think of the life he should be having, passing kids in school hallways, having crushes, skipping class, possibly learning things.
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I think the two of us have come to a real place of love and understanding, now, at the end of it. I'm more patient and thoughtfully introspective than I was three years ago, and he's really starting to see me not as this part of his life stuck in stone, but more of, though not completely, a flexible, feeling human being.
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I know now, for example, both intellectually and emotionally, that when he blows me off for friends, it's not about me—it sounds obvious when you say it out loud, but it doesn't feel that way inside while happening—that he's blowing me off because, when you're a teen, everything revolves around what your friends are doing *that moment* and your dad, well, he'll always be there.
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And I will.
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Fatherhood is a thing that can be hard to reflect upon in real time; you're too busy worrying about the basics or the necessities, or making sure you're not fucking things up too bad. But I feel lucky to sit here now, eating my donuts, doing just that.
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This pic is of two Pat Castaldos.
Me and my grandpa.