The Parenting Thing

Day 358:

You know Conor, as an expecting parent everybody has some playful anecdote or terrifying tale of the thing that happened with their best friend's mother's ex-dog owner's 2nd cousin on their father's side, child.  Be it about the pregnancy, the birth, the rearing, or the letting go as they make their way out the door to college or into the world to practice a craft.  The fact is, adults have been raising children for thousands of years and there is no 'right' way, though there is certainly a wrong way.

Whether it by tribe, a village, both parents, or even a single parent, there is only one thing needed to raise children.  That thing is Love.  The rest is simply a matter of style.  What I've learned since you've come into this world is that before you, I knew arbitrary things.  I imagined love, I thought I had so many answers, but then in you came and everything I ever knew became slightly, shall I say, skewed.

A parent's love is unwavering and the connection between child and parent is palpable.  By you gracing our lives I've taken a great deal of stock in that and for more reasons than I could possibly explain.  It's something that is literally impossible to understand until you become a parent, but knowing what I know now, it's so glaringly obvious how much I was loved by my parents.  A thing so easy to take for granted because you know inherently your mother and father will love you, no matter what, and they would protect you at all costs.  Even sacrificing their own life, both mortally and emotionally... There's no questioning it.  It just, is.

So now that I'm an expert in all things parenting after not even having been one for a full year, I can tell you this; parenting is easy with love, Son.  It's emotional, it's taxing,  and it can be both difficult and easy at the same time, a perplexing duality, but through love there's no part of the journey that's not worth it...

In life there are a great many things you can second guess, Conor.  You'll make many choices and decisions that will affect you and those around you, and there's no measure for how far reaching the ripples of those decisions will go.  Though in parenting a child the most noble thing a parent can do is make a decision and own it, stand by it, and defend it, come what may.  And I will, Son.  Your mother too, no doubt.  And someday, if you're as blessed as we are, and I can only hope that to be the case, you will too...

I love you, Son.
-Dad