A young father of twins and a newborn, Briton Underwood finds his way, all thanks to his children.
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“Feeling my way through the darkness, guided by a beating heart…”
The transition to fatherhood has not been one that was necessarily easy. It has been filled with nothing but trial and error. I have learned that there are rights and wrongs that only pertain to parenting my kids. I have found what I hope to be the successful and proper way to get my sons through the toddler years.
“I can’t tell where the journey will end but I know where to start-“
Even before the kids were born I was so dead set on how they would be raised and how I would breeze through parenting like it was a P.E. Class where I just show up and get credit. That isn’t the case at all. Parenting is amazing and fulfilling and fun. It is also the most difficult thing there is to do. You could raise thirty kids the exact same way with no idea what results you may yield.
“They tell me I’m too young to understand…”
I guess my age is a bit off-putting to people. On the cusp of becoming a whole 24 years-old yet I try and think before I speak. I wouldn’t go as far as to call myself an old-soul or mature but rather thoughtful. I have to be thoughtful, I have three kids to raise. I have to be comfortable in my own beliefs and morals or else how can I raise my kids right?
“So wake me up when it’s all over, when I’m wiser and I’m older-“
Every day passes in a blur-like quickness. Only yesterday it seems they were rolling dangerously to the edge of the bed. Now they run and scamper as I watch their little brother go side to side, working his way towards the same edge of the bed that kept me nervous for months a year and a half ago.
“All this time I was finding myself…”
I never realized how much I needed fatherhood until I held my first-borns. I needed the love, the compassion, the fulfillment this part of my life has brought me. I needed to learn that pure unequivocal love existed. The bond between parent and child. This role has made me complete, it has given my life something it lacked for years. I gained meaning.
“I didn’t know I was lost.”
Twenty-one years of my life I spent lost. Then my children came into my life. Not every day is easy, but every day of knowing this is what I was meant to be, a father, is worth it.
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Photo: Geraint Rowland/Flickr
Briton Underwood writes at Punk Rock Papa.
Lyrics in quotation marks from “Wake Me Up” by Avicii