Father's Day Is Complicated For Me

Father's day is a complicated time for me. For a lot of men it seems that Father's Day is barbecues, games of catch, naps, beer, fishing, trucks. Doing a Google search for Father's Day won't get you nearly as many results about video games and sharing the day with your polyamorous paramour. In fact, most searches are about what to get your dad on Father's day – "a patriotic watch" is the last thing I want from my six-year-old. But I digress – there is almost nothing on Google about surviving the day when you are a father-of-two-and-one-of-them-is-a-spy-and-doesn't-know-who-you-are. Or about surviving Father's Day when you are continually pressured to make sure they both feel you're being their Dad.

If you're reading this, it already means you have no trouble imagining tiny feet running around and banging into your knees, screaming and pulling things off shelves. That's a given. But we are seeing more and more that the typical formula of family we grew up knowing is not the norm, and there needs to be more discussion about combined families, adopted families, and found families. Imagine then, carrying boxes and boxes of toys into a new house that still looks too small. Still looks too run down. Still has neighbors you may not want your kids nearby. Imagine carrying a tiny bicycle and, days away from father's day (you still haven't managed to get him to ride it), putting it behind the porch because there's no shed yet, and worrying that he will notice that even though he's six, because he tells his mother everything. Or loading up a pack-and-play-as-a-bed for the toddler who just got out of the hospital, who you are taking into a new-used home in a neighborhood with a reputation for uncleanliness.

I have two sons – an 11-month-old and a 6-year-old, at the time of this writing. Everything I do with the 11-mo is genuine and contains the purity of an unadulterated parent-child relationship. Everything I do with the 6-year-old, there's a voice in the back of my head wondering what he'll tell his mother. Guess which one doesn't live with me?

Within a few short days I'll go to the police station to pick him up in my boyfriend's jeep (and she may or may not know he's my boyfriend), to take him back to my house where we live with my wife and our young child. He'll hand me some cheap, manly-themed dad gift (in previous years: a flask, a money-clip, a #1 Dad shirt), and I'll thank him from the bottom of my heart for it and then only wear or use it when he's around because it carries his mother's smug fake good-intentions with it.

I'll take him to our house, and the man who we're teaching my 11-month-old to call "papa" will be our "roommate" and I'll watch as he falls in kid-love with the man society says I can't have, and wonder if he'll go back to her this time with stories that blow the whole thing wide open. But until then we'll probably hang out inside, maybe go for a walk around the neighborhood, but mostly hang out inside because it's so hot. I'll try in vain to teach him to ride the bike, because that's what I'm supposed to do as a dad – but no one taught me to ride a bike, so how do I even begin? He'll get on and fail and we'll give up and go inside and he'll play gameboy, because that's what I really do as a dad.

For his first father's day, our 11-month-old will be spending quality time with me and his bigger brother, and it'll be bittersweet. Because that's the day his brother will leave him for the duration of two more weeks, and he's starting to figure that out. But in the meantime the 6-year-old will sit and play Metroid and show "his baby" (or "the baybus" – thanks boyfriend!) how he can kill Ridley or how he has to run from the SA-X. Then he'll get bored, or the baby will tear the game out of his hands. For Father's Day, my paramour will chase him around and put him down for naps and feed him and we'll call him Papa behind my 6-year-old's back, who won't get to spend a double Father's day like our baby does – and honestly, the person who will be bothered most by it will be me.

Then I'll take him back home, remembering all the plans I had that we didn't get to. We'll talk about our weekend, and our Father's Day. Subtly I'll emphasize things I'd prefer he talk about with his mother, such as his baby brother and the toys he played with and the things he learned – just to avoid her keeping me standing there talking an extra fifteen minutes about how I should have done things better. But I'll give him a big hug and kiss and it won't have mattered, and I'll eagerly await the next time I see him. Then I'll go back to the little house we moved into, and the baby will be sitting in a mess of things he pulled down and scattered everywhere and all of the little flaws will suddenly look unimportant, because he will look up at me and smile.

Yeah, Father's Day is a complicated time for me. I wouldn't have it any other way.