Welcome to Portraits of Fatherhood: We’re telling the story of today’s dads.
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There is no better place to witness the changing roles of men and women in the larger culture than through the lens of parenthood. But rather than speculate on what and how contemporary fathers do what they do, we’d like to bring you portraits of the dads themselves. In their own words. Would you like to be interviewed for this feature? See the end of the post for details.
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NAME Rob Azevedo
AGE 44
HOMETOWN/ WHERE DO YOU LIVE NOW? Melrose, Mass / Manchester, NH
NUMBER OF CHILDREN Two kids; girl 13 and boy 10
RELATIONSHIP STATUS Married 14 years
HOW DO YOU COMBINE WORK AND FAMILY?
We have been lucky as far as combining work and family. My wife is a teacher and my daughter goes to one of the junior high schools in the city. They leave together in the morning, very early. Far too early for me and my son, the 10 year old. While those two are dropping the hammer into fifth gear, charging around the house at 6 a.m., filling mugs of coffee, snapping hard plastic, tucking, chewing, plucking and securing the carrots, my boy and me are still rubbing the sleep out of our eyes, waiting for the heat to come up.
My wife drops the girl off at school then heads to her kindergarten teaching gig a few towns over. We stay home until it’s time for me to swing him by his fourth grade class down the street. Between the time the girls depart and taking my son to school, I have very little to do. At this point of the game, he can get his own milk, scrub his own tongue, sit his own self down and get his twenty minutes of reading in before school. If I’m in a pissy mood, well, I might make him hit the multiplication flash cards for an even five.
That’s done and it’s time for TOP TEN on ESPN, then we’re out the door. At school, I watch him walk up with all the other kids after kissing him goodbye. And not a single day goes by when I don’t nearly chock on my own spit as I drive off, hoping to God I get to see him again. Because at that point his future is out of my hands, this I know.
From there, I head off to wherever I’ll be that day. It could be the coast, the mountains, somewhere on the outskirts of the Granite State. I make my living selling oxygen. Yes, I sell air.
The wife is back in town somewhere after four, and I’m always good for the five o’clock pickup from hoops, music or some after-school program. We are lucky, I think, I guess. The system works, now, not then, not much. It really wasn’t until we hit our 40’s and ten years into our marriage that we finally figured out how to drive someplace and pick a kid up. Laughable, again, today, but not back then. Then, it was a battle, a grinder on the mind, the relationship, with everyone rushing around, out of control, pretending, festering, so exhausted, so not digging this whole home life thing. Come on! I know you have felt that thickness that encases your body, your spirIt and mind when you’re tapped out. When all you want to do is throw your hands up and say, “I’m done. I’m out. Can’t do this no more. So done. So, so done.”
Then you hang in there for another hour, another day, another two weeks, months, allowing the seasons to change, for the new air to flushing out the bad, bustling in the good.
After all, we’re really only talking about picking a couple kids up from school. Right?
WHAT IS YOUR WORST PARENTING MOMENT?
It’s too crushing to relive, for me, for my temperament, for what I can and cannot handle as an individual, a parent mostly….but my woes in this department are my own, as are yours. And what might seem maddening to me as a parent might not to you. And vice versa. Yet in the end they all blend. Do they not?
I’ll continue.
So to the worst moment, the great reveal: Little over a year ago, I saw a sadness in my son’s eyes that flattens me physically to picture this very moment. He was lost, I suppose, caught up in a nine year olds boys mind trap. He was filled with an anxiety that lasted some months, constantly second guessing himself, not knowing what to share, not knowing exactly what it was that he wanted to share, nor wiling to uncork his unknowing self.
Most days, on the outside, he looked great, like any other boy his age shopping around for KD socks. But then I would catch a glimpse of him in the rearview mirror as we were heading back from somewhere else. Something had changed in his eyes. That pop wasn’t there, the gleam, the shine you expect in a child. What brought this new and shitty sensation on is anyone’s guess. It wasn’t deliberate, this I know. More of nature’s way of messing with your equilibrium, I think.
One minute a nine year old is watching one of those trash teen shows, letting all the fast talking innuendos rush past them because they don’t know what anyone is talking about, really. Then the next day in the lunch line some older kid (Older? Like 10) starts dissecting the show to your baby boy on a whole new level because he’s got a brother in high school and their house only has one TV in it. And they both like watching trashy teen shows.
Needless to say, we haven’t seen anything that looks like a Raven in our house for a few years now.
After weeks of letting this giant linger inside him, the kid let go. He busted down, finally, one night and started “emptying out the cup” letting his grill cool, learning to breathe again. It was crushing to witness. Right now, I want to vomit thinking about it.
I won’t.
And what was the poison that filled that cup? Nothing much to you and me, but to a nine year old boy, well, it was overwhelming. And it was ultra-important that we as parents stomped this shit out of our baby boy. Flatten it dead. Let it rot right there, till it turns to dust.
We would saddle up next to him every night at bedtime, when most of the maggots and fangy fucks come out of the dark. Slowly we dealt with the temporary dread he carried, trying to gain his confidence, trying to tell him that being a Mom and Dad is more than just wiping your ass and making sure your collar is tight for a school picture. It’s about leading a team, a clan, a family. It’s about going through this life side-by-side, right through the hurt, the confusion, whatever. Just trying to let him know that we are here to lessen his burden.
It’s our job.
Low and behold, it worked, the time we spent plucking the sadness out of him, just as the “worry book” said it would, a wonderful adolescence help book called “What To Do When You Worry Too Much” by Dawn Huebner that we turned to often during this period of distress. We allowed someone to speak, not simply out of love and devotion, but from a professional stand point, a new voice, whatever it takes. Right?
We had some good nights and bad ones. I worked harder as parent during those months then I ever worked at anything in my life, professional or otherwise. But today he is whole again, popping and gleaming. And not a week goes by when I don’t ask him, “Hey, buddy, how’s the ol’ cup doing? Anything we need to empty out?”
“Smash, Dada,” he often says. “Nothing in it.”
I live to hear those words.
BEST PARENTING MOMENT?
They are uncountable. I draw a blank when I try to think of “one.” The moments are as simple as holding my child cheek-to-cheek when they were babies, bathing in that baby skin, jamming my nose in their infant mouths because I loved the smell of the inside of their face. It can be sitting hungover at my sons hoop practice on a Saturday morning, watching him nearly snap a kids ankles deakin’ his way to the hoop. It can be watching “Peaky Blinders” and hearing my daughter practicing her saxophone up in her bedroom, nailing a note. It can be falling asleep with my son sitting on me after dinner, watching Seinfeld or the Celtics. It can be walking him through the gates of Fenway Park for the first time or slow dancing with my daughter at a Father/Daughter dance, feeling her tears rush through my dress shirt, knowing that she’s crying because this is the last Father/Daughter Dance we will ever attend. Until the Big Day.
Let’s be clear: On the whole, these moments are quick glimpses that might last only a second or two. But they have shaped me, made me a little bit less negative, more of a believer in redemption through unconditional love than anything else. The best moments as a parent are when you truly feel it, not faking it for the neighbors, for Facebook, for Christmas parties, but when you feel that love deep, deep down in your soul. A love you don’t need to share with the masses, a very personal, love affirming emotion. It’s fleeting, at times, this magical moment, but when it’s there, it’s permanent. Self-pride! That’s what it is! When you get it right as a parent, the payoff is a rush of satisfaction, that moment when you realize that that pop and sizzle in your child’s eye is part of you, something you helped to create. We as parents aren’t just looking for that one “Greatest Moment” with our children. We want bushels full of them, piles and piles of them. And then some.
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We’re looking for a few good dads.
IF you’d like to be interviewed for this feature, please write to Lisa Duggan at: [email protected]
Please write “Portraits of Fatherhood” in the subject line.
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