Being a Papa...

I was without my people this past Sunday, which was Father's Day. I wasn't thinking about this on-purpose because it was Father's Day. I just happened to be missing my people in general and my little dudes specifically and I discovered, quite by accident, the core of what it means to be a Papa. I'd always been aware that the emotions connected to becoming a parent weren't just joyful (when the kids are being cute) or a nuisance (when the kids are unplugging my computer). It isn't just love, either, anymore than a poem is about spelling. I've been aware, from the beginning, shortly after my little boy was born, that there is something enormous and scary underneath the love and the joy and occasional annoyance and the laughter. There is something down deep, in the bedrock of my immovable core. The feeling is really, really hard to describe. It's as if the most numbing fear and the most iron-clad courage could be smelted into an emotion so gigantic that it is hard to see, the way a climber can't really see the mountain he is scaling.

Anyway, I figured out what it is. Becoming a Papa means suddenly having something in your life that you would die for. Without question or the slightest hesitation.

Up until that little baby man was born, the idea of dying for something was nebulous and challenging. I hoped I'd be able to die for my faith, if called to do so, but I had my doubts. I assumed that was the sort of commitment you'd only know you could make when and if the moment came. I wanted to believe I would die for a cause. But the truth of the matter was I never expected that to happen. And deep down, I was pretty comfortable with that expectation.

Having little people changes that. I'd die for them without the slightest second thought. I'd do it gladly, if it meant saving them, protecting them. When they were born, the whole question of whether there was something in life I'd die for stopped being a question. As unlikely and remote as that event might be (and it's pretty remote, thankfully), it's still a reality that is a part, a conscious part, of my every day. That's the explanation for that gigantic, dark undercurrent beneath the joy and the annoyance and the pleasure and the frustration of parenting. And I don't expect it'll ever go away.

Heavy, eh?