essays

When my son was born, they placed him in my arms, swaddled and impossibly small. The room moved around us — nurses, machines, soft beeping that never stopped. I moved too. I did what was expected. I nodded. I watched. But I didn’t understand what had happened.

Not yet.

That came later.

After the bustle faded and the room emptied. After we were alone. Just me, lying on a narrow rollaway bed in the corner, holding him against my chest. The overhead lights still hummed. The machines clicked softly beside us. And that’s when it landed.

This wasn’t a moment. It was a crossing.

He was mine. And I was the one responsible now. There was no buffer. No one to turn to. No instructions. Just the weight of a life — warm and breathing on my chest — and the sudden, quiet knowledge that I was the one who had to carry it.

His breath was soft.

Mine wasn’t.

That’s when the fear came. Not like a wave — but like gravity.

And under it, something else stirred: the shape of my own father. Not as memory, but as absence.

I didn’t grow up with a model for this. What it meant to stay. What it looked like to show up without anger, without distance, without making love feel like a test.

So when they handed him to me, I didn’t just receive a child. I received a question. Can I be something I never saw?

He had jaundice. They checked his blood often — pricks so frequent the skin on his heel turned red. Feeding was hard. Nothing felt instinctual. Every small decision felt like it could open something too big to close.

That’s why I asked. I turned to the doctor and said, quietly: What do you recommend? Not because I thought they had the answer. But because I needed to begin. Somewhere. Anywhere.

That asking was the first real act of fatherhood I ever made. Not the holding. Not the name. But the moment I admitted: I don’t know how, but I want to do this differently.

And that’s what stayed.

I began making the best decisions I could, one at a time. Not perfectly. Not with certainty. Just with presence. And in that slow becoming, I began to see my parents differently. Not with absolution. Just with a little more understanding. The fear they must have felt. The weight they carried — not always well, but still carried.

Now, when I speak to other parents, I don’t offer advice. Just presence. I share what’s worked for us. I hold space for what hasn’t. Because everyone’s journey is different. And everyone’s afraid at first. They just don’t always say it out loud.

These are the moments I carry. Not the first steps or birthdays — but the smallest scenes. The ones where nothing looked like success, but everything began.

A quiet room.

A small child.

And a father, slowly learning how to be a father.