Hugo Schwyzer

My wife, daughter, mother-in-law and I spent a very happy weekend in New York. We saw family and friends and kept ourselves very busy. I didn’t start visiting Manhattan regularly until a decade or so ago — and now, increasingly, I see it as somewhere I could live. (My dear wife would embrace that idea very eagerly.) The pace at which things happen is indeed satisfactory, and the fear of boredom is allayed in so many countless ways by that marvelous city.

It was the baby’s first long plane ride, and if I do say so myself she and her carers acquitted themselves splendidly. I now consider myself an old hand at wrangling strollers down jet ways and changing diapers in the lavatory in the midst of not-inconsiderable turbulence. My wife and I arranged our meals to be served separately, so that one could hold Heloise while the other ate. And oh, the blessing of a happy baby whose delicate ears are untroubled by landings and takeoffs. Heloise barely cried at all, and spent most of her waking time charming the FAs and her fellow passengers. (We are lucky parents, we know.)

I’ve got a post or two about feminist co-parenting (from the limited perspective, of course, of a first-time papa to a not-quite five-month old) in the hopper. For now, let me say simply how much I love being a father. There is nothing singular about this experience I’m having; many of my readers have had it or are having it, some many times over. But my goodness, what an extraordinary delight this girl is! And how extraordinary too to discover in myself reservoirs of patience and energy that I had no idea existed, reservoirs that might have gone untapped had my wife and I not had this little girl.

This Sunday will be my first Father’s Day since Heloise was born. Father’s Day has been a bittersweet occasion for me in recent years; it was on Father’s Day 2006 that I last spoke to my papa, four days before he died. I wish he were here to see his granddaughter; I wish he were here so that he and I could have a long chat about fatherhood. My faith tells me he is present as a loving witness, and I find myself talking to him quite a bit (usually in the car when I’m by myself, mind you.) My gentlest impulses, I think, are his, and more than once I have asked for him to stand with me as I approached some new and perplexing (albeit delightful) “papa task.”

I’m also grateful to the young people I’ve worked with in recent years, some of whom have taught me a great deal about what it means to be a father figure. I’ve been mentoring teenagers since I was barely into my twenties; somewhere along the line I passed from “slightly older peer” to (at least for a few) a “Dad” figure. It was in 2004 that one of my high school kids sent me a father’s day card — a gesture that left me teary-eyed, touched, and slightly chagrined. (Five years ago, I wasn’t quite ready to acknowledge that I was old enough to be a father-figure. Those qualms about ageing are long gone, as my posts on the subject in the past few years have pointed out.)

In any case, I suspect that to whatever degree I “father well”, much is owed to my own papa — and to those who have, in recent years, given me the great honor of allowing me to play to some small degree a “Dad” role in their lives.

On Sunday, we’ll be in Santa Barbara with family. I purpose to rise at dawn, strap on my Asics and run over to the cemetary where my father lies, honoring him and the day which now, for the first time, honors us both. With luck, I’ll be back to my wife and daughter before either have awakened.