Father's Day

(First posted on Father's Day, 2022.)

Today is Father’s Day in the US, so I’m writing about fatherhood. I started composing this blog post in my head as I slept in late this morning—without any small children jumping up and down on top of me like in the good old days—but writing it all down took a little more skill than I expected, because of course. At least it isn’t midnight yet.

My wife and I have two sons; one is 23 years old and one is 22½. Since they’d be horribly embarrassed to see their names here—each for his own excellent reasons—I’ll just write “our first son” and “our second son,” respectively.

We adopted both our sons at their births, which is why their ages can differ by only 7 months and 11 days. (Pro Tip to Self: Think “7-Eleven” to recall this, but don’t ever tell anyone you need such a silly shortcut.) It’s incredibly hard to raise two children so close in age, but you don’t have to change diapers, then stop changing diapers for a while, then have to start all over again.

This post is about our first son, since that was when my fatherhood began.

I’m a lifelong techie. I’d long ago read Richard Dawkins’ theory that parents love and protect their children because the parents and the children share genes, and because our genes control our behavior, and so and so on. If my son shares half my chromosomes, and he’s suddenly in mortal danger, my genes might decide that saving him is worth sacrificing myself, if doing so gives my son’s copies of those very same crafty genes a better chance to live on. It’s a very simple explanation of very complex behavior, so it made complete sense (to me).

But what about adoption? I knew our adopted children and I would share lots of genes—like most humans I know—but not as many as regular old biological parents do. Also, while biological parents get several months to prepare themselves, pre-bonding with their imminent offspring, we were told he’d be born in just over a week. That was enough time to buy a car seat and cute baby clothes, my wife explained to me, but would I have enough time to pre-bond too? (My wife would know what to do, I was sure, but I was just the father, and a techie to boot. I had a Ph.D. in Computer Science, but I really didn’t see how that would help.)

It was the Summer of 1999 and the early days of dad-rock. We already had tickets for a big outdoor concert on Sunday night—Bob Dylan and Paul Simon!—and we knew his due date was Monday. I figured we’d see the concert, then drive straight to the local hospital where he’d be born. Great plan, and too bad it didn’t work.

It wasn't until late the next day when the call came in. Finally! I grabbed my nifty Sony VAIO PCG-C1 Picturebook laptop (what a name!) with its built-in rotating camera taking big, big 640×480 photos. I figured we’d drive to the hospital, wait for our son to be born, snap some JPEGs, and mail them to our friends. (At last, a way to use my Ph.D. in Computer Science!)

And this time my plan worked!

(Our second son was born 7 months, 11 days later, and we were much better prepared by then, but that’s another story for another day.)

But what about that old theory that parents love and protect their children because the children share so many of the same genes? Well, when I saw our son, it felt just as if a switch was flipped inside my brain. He was my son, I was his father, and that was that. I noticed other mental changes in the days and weeks and months following; for instance, when his bottle or cup would start to fall off the table, my reactions felt much faster than before, and I could readily catch it in mid-air. But that’s another story for another day too.