The Mystery of Fatherhood

Even though I have a father and am married to a man who is a father, I don’t have a good understanding of what it means to be a father. From watching my husband interact with our daughters, I can tell there is a difference, but understanding it is my challenge as I prepare for Father’s Day.

Of course, actual preparations for the holiday are easy and hardly a mystery. For my husband’s celebration, our girls will shower him with kisses and homemade cards as he lounges on his best Father’s Day present ever: a large patch of Astroturf. Yes, I am giving my husband a fake green lawn, something he has wanted for months but I have not allowed. The first time he mentioned it, I started to laugh. After I realized his motivation was part environmental (no water and lawn chemicals) and part economic (no more gardeners), I started to come around. What I can’t quite understand is his enthusiasm. When the salesman was here, you would have thought he was drinking Cristal champagne on the coast of Cannes, not discussing bits of green plastic.

Which brings me back to my attempt to understand men and fatherhood slightly better than I do now. Years ago whilst watching a magnificent Alaskan sunset with an old boyfriend, I came to accept that I would never understand men. As we both stared at the sky awash in color, I asked my boyfriend what he was thinking about and he replied, “A hamburger.” He was thinking about chopped meat while I was contemplating the meaning of life.

I decided that since I have spent most of my career interviewing everyone from coal miners to Johnny Depp, I would interview my own husband about his thoughts on fatherhood. I booked a babysitter and made reservations for dinner at a nearby restaurant. As we sat down and ordered drinks, I began easing into my routine when he looked at me suspiciously, “Are you trying to interview me?”

“I just need to understand fatherhood. What does it feel like to you?” I don’t know if it’s because I used the word ‘feel’ or what I did wrong, but the look on his face reminded me of the time I asked Julie Andrews the same question twice—this interview was going nowhere.

“Do you understand motherhood?” he asked me. “Why don’t you talk to your father, interview him.”

I knew my parents were on their way to Vienna, but was able to track down my dad in the Atlanta airport minutes before they boarded their plane. “Fatherhood is extremely rewarding and keeps getting better as you get older,” he shared.

“I know, but what does it feel like to be a father? How is it different from being a mom?”

“I don’t think anything can replace the physical bond that a mother has with a child. My job was to provide you and your sister with safety, security and to teach ethical and moral values. And then a funny thing happened, I began having greater empathy for women.”

For some reason, this surprised me. ‘Empathy?”

We talked about when, as a teenager, I worked at the local Wendy’s fast food joint. The manager liked to put his arm around me and ask me to step into the meat locker. Thanks to my big mouth and good friend Richard, nothing ever happened beyond experiencing some bad body odor. I didn’t tell my parents about the incidents until I quit. Until now, I had never realized how much it had angered and changed my father.

“After that, I was able to see the world from a woman’s point of view. It changed the way I interacted with women and worked with my female students at the university.”

My head was swirling with thoughts of my own childhood, being a mom and my attempt to understood my Dad’s experience as a father. I had never afforded my dad the luxury of thinking he understood my position as a woman. I had saved those discussions for my mom, an obviously unfair choice. I realized that if our parental capacity to empathize is as large as our capacity to love, there is nothing we can’t truly understand.

Even if hamburgers and Astroturf are involved.