Father’s Day

Father’s Day. I never actually know when it is. On Saturday of last week I thought it was the following day and that my kids, as well as all of the online shops that blast out endless advertisements for shiny grill sets and crispy white New Balance sneakers, were just being extra stealthy this year.

Anyways, I was wrong. It’s today.

It’s 7:30am and I’ve been up for a couple hours now, but the kids are still cozy, asleep in bed — Naia probably dreaming up her next joke and imagining a chocolate ice cream on a hot summer afternoon, and Kristian having visions of turning that 180 varial kickflip (a skate trick) he’s almost perfected into a full-on 360 “tre” flip.

Ahhh, to be young.

And for me, ahhh to have a few minutes to myself.

But here I am, awake, realizing (and kind of annoyed) that I haven’t made a post recently on this website that I put quite a bit of time and effort into designing a few months ago. That said, if I knock this out quickly, that will make for a better day — so I’ll stop rambling and try to get to what I’m actually hoping to write about.

Which is, well, being a dad.

Growing up, my own dad worked and was away a lot. He was stern but also hilarious — an odd combination that made him unpredictable, intimidating, but also loads of fun to be around. He expected a lot from my sisters and me — but there was definitely added pressure on me, his only son. He figured out in his mind who and what I was going to be before I had the chance to give it any thought myself. Not one to be confrontational, I just went along because I didn’t want to let him down. To be honest, I was probably just too young to understand that his dreams weren’t my own, so when he died and I had just started high school, my world was turned upside down.

It was tragic and devastating — the most influential person in my life was gone — but even being so young, I was able to see it as an opportunity to start fresh. And I made the decision to take along the best things he’d taught me on my new path forward — but I’d leave all of the rest behind.

I think about my dad a lot, still, after more than 25 years being gone, and I see a lot of him in me since I’ve become a dad — for better or for worse. I’m not the doctor he thought I’d be, but I do like to think he’s smiling somewhere on a distant beach watching me forge a different path in the sun with my own kids.

Considering all of this, when Dorthe passed away six months ago, the immediate devastation of the situation and the questions of “how the hell am I going to manage?” and “are the kids ever going to recover from this tragedy?” soon brought me back to my younger self and the memories of losing my own dad.

And I quickly realized that while things would never be the same as before, inevitably they would get easier, and, eventually, we would all be okay. We’d just need to adapt and figure out the dynamics of our new, smaller crew.

So that’s what we did.

We downsized, we cleaned, we laughed, we cried, we fixed things, we tossed things, we remembered things, and we’ve let Dorthe float in and out of conversations like she’d either never left — or that we’ll, of course, end up seeing her later on. To be honest, I haven’t actively had discussions or set aside time with Kristian and Naia to talk about Dorthe directly, rather my hope has been that it would happen naturally. And it does.

Being a single dad, a lot of people wonder if it’s hard to be with the kids all of the time and the easy answer is, it’s not. Yes, it’s a lot of running around and cleaning and packing and scrambling, but we’ve all learned what to expect from one another, so it’s all just a part of the routine now. And beyond that, I do get some time to myself thanks to the help of good friends who have been invaluable for the past six months. You all know who you are — so thank you.

For me — like I’ve said and experienced before — it’s a new start. It’s a new way to consider what’s important. A new way to look at the kids. A new outlook on life. A time to become a better dad by knowing full well that everything can change in an instant — so I’d better make the best of it all when and while I still can.

Right now, all things considered, Kristian and Naia couldn’t be better. They are happy. They have good friends. They love school. They smile and laugh and they get excited for new things every single day. And beyond that, they are learning who they are and what they want to be on their own time and their own terms.

I try to document all of this as it happens which is why I’ve been posting more since everything happened in December. The photos I take are just snap shots of our everyday life, and they tell the story of how we’re doing way better than I can when I’m half-awake on a Sunday morning.

But sometimes it’s worthwhile to get it down on paper, too — so here you go.

After six months of change and recovery, the moral of this long winded story is that the three of us have all realized that sometimes one end can turn into a new beginning. That and, being a solo dad to two amazing kids isn’t really hard, even though at times, it can be difficult.

But thanks to Dorthe, whose love and compassion made Kristian and Naia such special souls, and whose strength all those years ago brought them into the world and made me an actual father, the difficult job of having the kids on my own is about as easy as it could possibly be. And every day we find solace knowing she’s smiling down — maybe on that same beach with my dad — while we’re making new footprints in the sand under the very same sun.