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Watching my wife sleep after 44 years of living together is a cherishable moment when I stop to do it. Often I wake first and she slumbers on with our dog Geysa nestled in close. It’s a time to practice what I understand and can easily forget: this moment is a miracle.
There have been plenty of times I’ve waited impatiently for her to tell me something about her day, the kids, what Geysa did that’s funny or exasperating. If you’re a guy you know the feeling of ‘hurry up’ inside your gut or chest and the whirling inside your head when you have already pushed the ‘go’ button to leave for work and your wife wants to tell you about the amazing shoe sale that’s happening in two weeks. Or she asks you what your day looks like and you’d just rather not say because, well, you’ve already pushed the ‘go’ button.
Most of the articles in the Good Men Project are touching on this subject. How do you stay connected to your loved ones if you don’t include an emotional openness? What can you do to resume the love that started this relationship in the beginning?
The feeling of love is not what I’d use to describe the anxious moving on when my mate is sharing herself. Getting to where and when I’m doing what’s really important became for me an addiction. Go to work, get the kids to bed, get the chores done, make love, get things done. Moving, moving, anticipating rather than accepting what’s right here, right now.
I confess that my imagined life brought all the emotional pain I’ve experienced with my wife and kids. The imagined future and what it offered, either good or bad, became more important than being in my body and senses completely with the kids or their mom.
This challenge doesn’t go away. The kids are grown with kids of their own, and their own particular challenge to stay present, rather than rushing off mentally, emotionally, and ultimately physically. Looking into my role as a dad brings me to say I was sufficient as a provider of some things, but not others. Probably a better father than a husband. If I had been as sensitive to Clare as often and deeply as I was to the kids, well, the children and she and I would have experienced more joy.
In that distinction is where this article arises. I am still a father to our three beautiful mysteries, and grandfather to their mysteries. Accepting my wife, my children’s mother as a continuing mystery is my goal. Celebrating her interests, challenges, inconsistencies and beautiful nature is possible and worthwhile.
Our children watch us with senses as keen or keener than our own. They feel and respond to our feelings and responses. While I don’t see them nearly as much since they’ve grown and moved out, we still interact. They see me with their mom and continue to grow their relations with her. When I speak of her to them, they take in my words and feelings. When I speak to her in front of them, the same thing. They are less absorbent, yet still growing, just like all of us. My children are seeing their future in how I treat their mother.
This father role continues, and nothing’s really changed. The commitment to loving kindness still the ultimate law of life.
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Photo credit: Getty Images