In general, I think I’m a pretty fun mom. We do creative activities and bake and tell stories and explore. Yet, there are times when I turn a corner and I see Tom doing something with the kids that I never would have thought of, like having a pajama jam session or turning the playgym into a big fort, and I can’t imagine who our kids would be if he weren’t in their lives. I’ve always loved that he tends to flip the world off its axis and see it from some totally different perspective, and that’s how he parents, too.
I know he’s exhausted. Three kids, two dogs, and a wife who is convinced that it’s possible to squeeze 27 hours worth of stuff into a 24-hour day must be exhausting to live with. Yet, in the midst of it all, he musters up the reserve to cook and clean and play and work and run around with his screwdriver trying to put a dent in my on-going list of to-dos. And he does it with grace and patience. And he gives me way more back rubs than I give him, and he almost never complains about it.
Of course, when auditioning for the role of “father of my children”, he had a lot to live up to, as my own dad set quite a precedent. It was a generation where dads could do very little with their kids and still get high marks for their parenting. Instead, he made up stories and baked cookies and sang songs with his guitar. When my mom went back to school, I was proud to tell my friends that my dad did the laundry and almost always made dinner, an anomaly even in our liberal crowd.
I really wanted to write a much more eloquent thing about how amazing the two of them are and how lucky I am to have them in my lives, but I typed a bunch of things and nothing came out quite right. I have this tendency to not do things because I want to say just the right thing or do it in just the right way, and then I do it late or not at all. Which is stupid. And I don’t want this holiday to go by without saying thank you.
So thank you both for filling those Father shoes, day in and out, in the very best possible way.