The Importance of Being Dad

My husband, Isidore, works in Information Technology. He is also a Dad.  One of his jobs provides a salary, recognition, and big handshakes of appreciation.  The other one, uh, not so much.  But I know the real deal: while it’s important that all those computers run smoothly, it’s the 24/7, thankless, drain-your-bank-account Dad job that really matters, because that’s the one that is shaping who our children will become.

When our little ones came into this world, one of their parents had a lot of experience caring for babies––and it wasn’t me. With two older sisters, I was the one who was babied in my family.  Isidore, on the other hand, is the oldest of seven children and was well into his teens when the youngest ones were born.  In his traditional Nigerian family, older children care for younger ones, so he held and fed and changed a lot of babies.  Skills, it turns out, that are remarkably useful to a wife and new mother.

So there was never any question that Isidore would be a hands-on dad.  From the moment that he cut the umbilical cord (shocked at how tough that bugger was), we have walked this rocky parenting path together.  And for this, I am profoundly grateful.

But then there’s work.  As every parent knows, caring for our kids includes providing for them.  We hunt and gather differently these days, but the pursuit of green still takes us away from our (heated) caves.  When our daughter was born, my husband and I were both freelancers, and since my job required travel, we alternated being the full-time caregiver.  In between jobs, we spent quality time as a family, but the insurance scramble and the stress of sporadic income was taking its toll.  When a permanent position came his way, we knew it was time.

At first I worried how our daughter would handle the transition, but between workplace flexibility and evening hours at the pediatrician’s office, Isidore has been able to be there when she (we) needed him most.  Like when our little darling experimented with shoving a dried corn kernel into her ear so far that it had to be medically extracted, it was Daddy who answered those embarrassing questions (I swear it happened at preschool!).  Or later, when our infant son was hospitalized with croup, it was Daddy who slept with one eye open next to his hospital crib.

By being there, through the emergencies and the trivialities, their dad has written into the code of our children’s operating software that there are two places to seek refuge in the storm: Mommy and Daddy.  And they are different.  We parent differently, we comfort differently, heck, we blow their nose differently!  And each way is important—no crucial—to who these youngsters are going to be.

When our daughter came down with a yucky virus recently, she was miserable.  She flopped around on the couch, everything hurt. By evening, I had exhausted my repertoire of comfort and distraction techniques, and then like a miracle, Daddy appeared.  One glance at her sad face melted him on the spot.  He scooped her into his arms and then snuggled her onto the couch.  “Daddy’s here,” he whispered as she drifted off to sleep, “Daddy’s here.”

Watching them, I thought of all the amazing dads in the world, and prayed that each and every one of them knows how important they are.

** This piece was originally published in Chicago Parent Magazine (June 2011)