The Fatherhood Moment
It’s a chilly Saturday evening and the golden sun is fading quickly. Flocks of birds pass overhead on their way to roost and the crisp northern breeze rains down leaves from the pecan tree in the backyard as it passes through. It’s a classic Central Texas December twilight.
Enter a father. He steps into the yard and admires the scene. There’s a fire bowl underneath the pecan tree that hasn’t seen its first use of the season. There’s a stack of branches in the corner. What more perfect setting could a suburban dad ask for to get a fire going?
The father steps inside the house and announces he’s going to make a fire (he may or may not have grunted Tim Taylor style) and grabs a beer. The four-year-old, his eldest, is visibly excited and asks to join him. The father grins and tells him to come on out.
The father gets some chairs arranged around the fire bowl and begins arranging the kindling in the bowl. Arranging isn’t quite right...he begins constructing a kindling masterpiece. I mean, this thing could have been in architectural magazines. Really, just a work of art.
His strapping young son is earnestly assisting by handing him broken twigs and sticks. In short order, they have the kindling ready and the father lights the fire (maybe using artificial accelerants, maybe not).
As the kindling begins to burn the father places some large pieces of wood on the fire and sits down. The two-year-old then pokes his large head around the side of the house and asks if he can come over. The father grins and tells him to come on over.
And the scene is complete. A father sits with his two oldest sons, beer in hand, basking in the crackling glow of the first fire of the season on a thoroughly pleasant evening. The father looks at his boys as they stare into the fire and almost says out loud, this is how it’s supposed to be. The quintessential fatherhood moment.
It was awesome. For about three seconds.
Then the oldest says he’s going to get a drink and attempts to get out of his chair by standing on the arm of it, which causes him to fall backward toward the fire. The father catches him and he’s unhurt but very embarrassed and thus bursts into tears.
Meanwhile the two-year-old, stick in hand, suddenly charges the fire like some sort of miniature Don Quixote. The father snaps at him to stop while lunging forward. The boy stops in his tracks. And then bursts into tears.
Like a pair of whipped puppies, the two boys run toward the back door and inside the house crying for their mom.
The father is left alone wondering how it all went so wrong so fast.
And, as he gazes into the fire, he has a moment of clarity where he suddenly realizes: this is the quintessential fatherhood moment.