What It's Like As a Dad

This morning I was putting my shoes on to run outdoors for a quick five-minute errand. From across the apartment my daughter Thuy saw me preparing to leave and started waving and wishing me an energetic "G'bye! G'bye!" She's just a few days shy of twenty-two months old now, and so her mother and I still find this relatively new level of articulateness and situational acuity impressive and adorable.

I assured her I'd be back quickly, then opened the front door and started stepping out of the apartment, but just then she ran over to me with a sudden urgency and said "Kiss!" She tugged on my hand to get me to kneel down, and then gave me a tiny peck on the cheek before saying "G'bye!" again.

It was a wonderful little Father's Day moment, but more than that it helped crystallize for me what this feeling of having this little girl in my life is like. Before parenthood I was preoccupied with escaping mundanity; in my relationships, in my work, in my ambitions of all kinds, I labored to free myself of daily trivialities and strive for bigger and better things. Now the world looks very different. When a quotidian non-event like walking out the front door can become something to cherish for a lifetime, it makes me realize that there is grand import hidden in every little detail of every day, and that in fact the mundane can be unspeakably amazing. Being a parent does this to you.

Happy Father's Day, everybody.

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