I never claimed to be a parenting expert. Never wanted the label. Some out there maybe thought I had more of a clue than the rest. Not even close. I had ideas, sure, and I try hard almost always, but I’ve been flying mostly blind for the last 15 1/2 years. I like to think that I’ve never said anything to the contrary but honestly, I can’t remember everything I’ve ever written, tweeted or said face to face.
Parenting is hard and writing about parenting being hard is also hard. I did that, I struggled through telling a hard-to-tell story, with the help of my fine editor at Good Housekeeping. I turned in a mess, a whiny bitchy mess. I basically said, here, please help me make this better. Boy, did they ever.
The end result is better stylistically by a country mile but it is still hard for me to reread because it is all true and not solved yet. Maybe it never will sort itself out. Maybe this is just the way things are from here on. I don’t have a clue about that either.
Truth is, some days I just don’t want to be a dad, I don’t want to put in the work. Some days I think about the empty nest years, some days I wish those years were closer.
But most days, I’m smiling.
