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SALT LAKE CITY — I came to be a father late in life: it was just a little over a month ago. I remember it well because it was the same day my newest grandchild died.
I was married 15 years ago to a woman who had children — four of them — and for some reason I held onto the title of “stepdad.” I kept it alive in my head even when the birth father was out of the picture.
“Well, if the kids don’t get stellar grades,” I thought, “and their teeth aren’t so straight, it’s not my fault. I’m only the stepdad.”
... the doctor showed me the picture on his expensive cellphone of the knot in the cord that prevented the baby from getting the oxygen it needed to live. I watched my stepson get emotional and something told me to be a better dad.
Being the stepdad was a pretty good gig — one my father and my grandfather before him had. Stepdads, each one. After all, there must be a reason the kids have different last names than ours.
Now, I know other guys who have stepped into the role of stepdad with grace and perseverance, who are picture perfect. I was just not one of them.
My disclaimer and I were living a reasonably happy life until I realized that said condition was keeping me tethered in the land of the mediocre dad — a place sponsored by takeout pizza and evening TV, where I was king. Long live me. I was set to enjoy a lengthy and pedestrian life, outliving everyone and everything but my disclaimer.
For me, the problem of being “only the stepdad” was one of semantics, surely. If “step” hadn’t been the issue, I may have found another to prevent me from committing, keeping me content with the status of outsider.
However, in that hospital room a little over a month ago, the doctor showed me the picture on his expensive cellphone of the knot in the cord that prevented the baby from getting the oxygen it needed to live. I watched my stepson get emotional and something told me to be a better dad. Right then and there, "Something” told me that a lot of my failures could be forgiven if I stepped it up that moment to be a dad.
- Real dads eat quiche: Allowing your children to experiment and make mistakes without freaking out.
- Real dads sometimes exfoliate: Sometimes a guy has to do something "un-guy-ish" to be a man for your kids.
- Dads and the tire swing: Finding a reason to get your children to come home to play.
I didn’t need to be told what to do in order to be the dad. I knew in my heart what dads do. I resolved to come back from … wherever I had been … and to commit to these kids and grandkids — and to my wife, carefully rocking a baby she would never get to tend.
I will be writing about my experiences as the Prodigal Dad. The guy who came back.
Now when my daughter comes home all mixed up in stuff she shouldn’t be mixed up in, I own it. I don’t dismiss it as someone else’s responsibility. I don’t walk into the other room and let my wife deal with it.
And when I get that call (which may come now that I gave my cell phone number out), I will go and pick up my boy from detention — if he should be so assigned — or be there when my eldest daughter goes through pregnancy as a single mother without a decent place to live. Because that’s what dads do.
It will follow my own personal path from confused stepfather to being the guy the kids call dad.
The Prodigal Dad.
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Main image: The incredible invisible dad and Davison Cheney's youngest son pose for a photo. (Photo: Davison Cheney)
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*Davison tends to write about things he is familiar with: things like raising children, taking children to therapy, bailing children out of trouble, and trying not to beat up parents of other children when they yell at his children for not getting the basketball to their children. Read more from Davison at davisoncheneymegadad.blogspot.com.**
