PapaKind

Why PapaKind?

Well, I was getting inspired by a few things out there on the web, mainly men talking about relationships with their fathers. It's an interesting thing: a man and his dad, as it also informs his relationships with his own kids, maybe especially his sons. I'm a 37 year old man in Northern California with a decent relationship with my own dad, however I mostly grew up several hundred miles away from him. The man who was much more involved in my upbringing, at least since I was eight years old, was my stepfather, who died in 1994 when he was 52 and I was 24. My relationships with both of these men was complicated, and still today - with two sons and a daughter of my own - I find I spend a fair amount of time thinking about my two fathers: the difficult upbringing with an emotionally unstable stepfather, whose love could be as fierce as his anger depending on the day of the week, or time of the day; and my more even tempered biological father who, despite his love for me, remained a more distant figure - geographically and emotionally - for most of my youth. I love and I'm grateful for my real dad, 68 this year, but I still miss my stepfather tremendously as well. I hope to write more about these two men.

Of course, I have two of my own sons now, and who knows what my legacy to them will be. One, 11 year old Vincent, fittingly, is a stepson to my wife. I became a stepson myself at eight years old when my mom moved us to Los Angeles to live with my new stepfather, 400 miles from my real dad. Vincent's mother and I, however, when we split made a commitment not to make the same mistakes our own sets of parents had made: moving a child far away from the other parent. I have to believe this is a positive thing, in the long run, for Vincent. My other kids, Henry, 7, and Josie, 5, live with my wife Amy and me full time, and like all dads I'm learning as I go.

As I look back on my own childhood and think about how I might avoid the mistakes I felt my own fathers made, I find that not only do I make brand new mistakes, I also make the exact damned mistakes I swore I wouldn't. I'm overly critical, I yell, I use my voice and my size to intimidate, I preach, I drone, I'm distracted. These were all criticisms I leveled at my own fathers, between the two of them. But I also love, I hug, I kiss, I show up at every single game, concert, conference, recital, and I tell them every single day how proud I am of the young people they are turning out to be. Between my two fathers I got a fair amount of this positive stuff as well.

So who knows? Maybe we men give our fathers too much credit in shaping our own lives. Maybe we were going to be who we are, regardless. And maybe so long as we're at least trying, we won't fuck our own sons up too badly; maybe they're just going to be who they are as well.

What interests me is the process. If there are any questions I'd like this site to address, they are: what was it like to be a son to your father when you were a kid? What's it like to be a son to your father now? How is it with your own sons or daughters? What kind of issues did you deal with then, and what kind do you deal with now, in respect to fathering? Are they the same, different, how? Do you accept or reject your father's influence, or if both, how does that conflict affect your own parenting?

So when I come across good writing by fathers or sons that touch on some of these questions, I'll point you toward it. If you have any ideas of your own, or something you've read somewhere, please let me know. May you continue to be inspired.