My son being born is easily the happiest moment of my life. The moment I saw my son I instantly believed in love at first sight. It was like every cell in my body was yearning just to hold him in my arms. After forty long weeks I was finally able to kiss his little lips and tell him “I love you,” over and over again. This was truly a life changing event. One minute I was one person and in the next minute I was a completely different person. I even had a new name. At the same time I was filled with fear about not being ready to be a father. This fear continued to build until the second happiest moment of my life which just so happens to have taken place minutes after the happiest moment of my life. This second moment changed me because I realized I was an adult. This gave my perspective on how selfish and immature I was a child.
After kissing and telling my newborn son “I love you” for what must have been twenty minutes, I noticed the room was quiet and I felt the stares of everyone in the room on me. These were not the stares of “Awe look at him what a cute daddy.” Instead these were the angry stares of the doctor, the nurses, and the mother of my child. As a man that had just spent the last nine months receiving angry stares for things like the way I was eating, the way I was breathing, the way I walked, and although she never would admit just the simple fact that I was the reason she was pregnant, I was not quite sure what I had done to draw the ire of every lady in the hospital room. Still as any man will tell you, I know I did something to get in trouble.
Then the doctor spoke up, “Um daddy did a great job getting through the labor and childbirth but do you think mommy could hold him?” I tell you this shamefully that I held him for another minute or so before handing him to mommy. I wiped the tears from my eyes and composed myself and by all accounts I was pretty sure I was not needed here anymore so I left the room to tell everyone the good news.
As I exited the room the first person I saw was my father. He was waiting in the hall that was supposed to be restricted to anyone other than hospital workers and people that were in labor. I imagine that someone told him that he could not be there but knowing my father he did not listen to them. He was leaning against the wall directly across from the birthing room. I realized he had been standing there listening to everything. Every moment of my son’s delivery from the first push to the last he was listening. When he heard the door open and close he looked up at me. I did not then, nor do I now possess the vocabulary to justly describe the way he was looking at me, all I can say is that this was a look I had never seen from him before. For my part I felt like I was seeing my father for the first time. We instinctively walked towards each other and my daddy wrapped his arms around me and for the first time, I knew. I knew what an idiot I had been my entire life.
My father grew up the only son of Sam and Rose Costa. Sam thought it was his duty in life to teach my dad to be a man. Part of being a man was not sucking your thumb. Sam had an interesting approach to solving this problem. He would duct tape my dad’s hands together as a so that he would not suck his thumb in his sleep. When Sam would come home and see that my father had removed the tape in his sleep and was sucking his thumb, his father would beat him like my father was a full grown man. These were not just slaps, but rather they were the closed fist hands of a golden gloves boxer. I don’t mean that as a metaphor, I mean that his father was a golden gloves contender. To look at my father’s nose it is easy to see the numerous times that my father’s nose was broken. Even now as I think about it I cringe at what it must have been like for a five year old boy to be woken up to a full grown man punching him in the face. Thumbsucking was not the only reason Sam used to beat my father. If Sam was drunk my dad got beat. If my aunts did something wrong my dad got beat. If Sam and Rose got into an argument my dad got beat. Sam did not believe in beating women, just my father.
I found out later when I was going through the end of my relationship with my son’s mother, that when my parents split up it was hard on my dad, much in the same way as my break up was hard on me, but he never let it show. When I was sent to live with him, I was being sent to live with the only person that was able to stay on top of me. My father took me in and gave me structure to ensure that I would get on the right path. He witnessed his friends and family get involved in drugs and other various criminal activities and was determined to make sure I avoided that life. When all the other kids were out drinking and bouncing around town causing whatever trouble they could, I was at home. I guess it worked because I have never done drugs, I don’t have a drinking problem, and I’m not in jail. My dad was strict on me because he loved me and wanted me to have a better life than him.
Not only was my dad strict but the guy was also a ninja spy. I could not do anything at school that he did not know about. If I got sent to the office, he knew. If I got a bad grade, he knew. If I skipped school, yep you guessed it he knew. I only saw my dad about forty five minutes a day, and for the most part my dad never had any free time, but he always had time to know what was going on with me at school. He was involved enough to recognize that I had fallen through the cracks, and that in a small town school like the one I went to, the teachers were not too interested in making sure I got off to a good start to my scholastic future. He sent me to Upward Bound because it placed me on a college campus and gave me the extra schooling I needed so that I could have a chance at being successful at life. My dad did this because he knew what it was like to have a parent that did not care about their kids future. His dad died after my dad turned ten. For her part his mother was truly neglectful. Yes she worked, but she made no attempt to involve herself in my dad’s life. If he got bad grades or skipped school, it didn’t matter because she didn’t care. There was nobody in my father’s life to instill the importance of an education to him. It wasn’t until he was in his late thirties that my dad went back to school, and he was determined to make sure I didn’t wait that long to do the same. Along with extra schooling Upward Bound gave me other tools that helped me build my confidence. It was an environment that allowed a person like me to be surrounded by other like people so that I could make friends.
Yeah we didn’t have nice things. Everything I owned was hand me downs. It seemed so important then, but in the long run it didn’t matter. All that matters is that my father did the best he could. The man went to college full time. When he wasn’t studying he was trying to sleep so he could go to work. At work, my father, a grown man, spent his evening wiping other adult’s asses. Literally that is what he did for a living. My dad worked as a nurse’s aid while he was in college. If the opportunity for him to work a double shift came up he worked it. There were times he would go seventy two hours without sleep. He never once complained. He worked the extra shifts so that he could afford to take me out to dinner once a month. He took me out on those dinners because he knew I did not have any friends and he was my friend. He missed me and liked spending time with his son. All he knew of his father was physical violence. All I know of my father is emotional support. He was always found time for me, no matter how busy he was, my father always had a way of knowing when I needed him. Having nice things doesn’t matter now because I always had food in my belly, clothes on my back and a roof over my head. My dad was one thing in my life that was never a hand me down.
I hugged my father looking at my childhood in a new light, and something that had never happened before happened. I heard my father begin to cry. I had never heard or seen my dad exhibit much emotion let alone cry. I didn’t realize it but I was crying too. We must have looked silly standing there hugging each other while crying. To be honest I don’t care how it looked because to me it was one of the most beautiful and tender moments I have ever felt. I felt so safe, so happy, and I felt so loved. This made me cry even harder. I never felt loved growing up as a child. I can’t explain why I just never really thought anyone loved me. When my son was born I had never felt so much love for another human being. This though was different. This was the first time I have ever felt so completely and unconditionally loved by another person. I know that no matter what I do or say my father will always love me and be proud of me. I know this because I felt the same way the moment I saw my son, and I could finally understand what my father had always felt when he looked at me. I wanted to be just like him. Being told I was the spitting image of my father was something I finally took pride in being told. Knowing how much he loved me made me happy. I did not think I could be any happier when my son was born but I had room in my heart. I was so full of joy that my chest hurt, I could not control my tears and neither could my father. We told each other that we loved one another. I told my father that I hoped I would be as good of a father as him and then he told me something I will never forget. He said,
“You’re gonna be better.”
