My father left when I was 6 years old. The age my son is now.

I don’t remember my father leaving. Did he walk out with a suitcase? Did they engineer it so he left while we were at school? I remember an argument, in the back bedroom with the door closed. I remember doing my little-child Saturday chores as the spring wind blew through the house. But his exit, days or weeks afterward, is not something I recall 45 years later. I don’t remember a day when he was suddenly gone.

But I do recall some things.

And I recall missing my father as the years passed.

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I recall missing him so much I thought I would simply give up and die. The missing was a vast blank space of yearning, of wanting his touch and his smell, so big, so huge that I felt lost in it for years. I remember a scratchy call from overseas from him one Christmas that we kids waited up for late into the night. I remember how empty that call was.

When children are forced to release something they hold dear, it cements into their memories the moments preceding it — the way of the world before that change, the smells and sounds. They hold onto what is gone with a feverish intensity. When a child loses someone or someplace dear to them, you had best be ready to replace it with something warm and real, or you will haunt your child with loss.

Before he left, my father would sit up nights watching TV. My mother usually went to bed early, exhausted by the work of raising four children. She was unable to find the energy to be present with her husband after her children went to sleep. My father watched TV alone.

My bedroom was just down the long straight hall. I shared it with my brother. My brother was a sleeper. I was a listener. There in my bed, I listened to the house growing quiet. As my older sisters were put to bed. As my mother retired. Until my father sat alone watching TV. Some nights, he would get up and make a milkshake. I could hear the blender in the kitchen. It would shut off and then, rising on bare feet I would go to the bedroom door, careful not to wake my brother.

I would ever so carefully open the door and peek around the edge of the door frame. There, down the hallway, he sat on the couch, a lamp beyond him, the warm glow backlighting him. And to this day I can see the warm glow there. I can see his silhouette. And as I peeked out, silent, he would turn and he would gesture to me. Then, I would enter the hall, quietly close the door, and race up the hall to join him on the couch.

There it would sit on the side table next to him. The extra glass. The extra vanilla milk shake. For me to sip as I nuzzled under his arm to watch TV.

Growing up in Houston in 1966, they had this thing called The Late Show. It wasn’t a national show. It was a local. It came on after the news. They showed old black-and-white movies. And as the show began, a jingle played. It went like this:

The Late Show,
Nothing could be finer than the late show.
Nothing could be greater than the greatest of stars,
Right on your own TV.

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Those moments with my father carried me through some very dark times. He loved me. His warmth and his charm wasn’t enough to quell the demons that wrecked his marriage, but he left me with a sense that I was special. And that I was loved. Even now, when I sit with my son, after a divorce and after moving him out of the house he was born into, I remember the lesson my father taught me. That the love of a father can heal wounds and fill the emptiness of loss. Even when that very love itself is what is lost.

And so, I hold my son close. I’m not leaving him. I’m with him. And I try to remember to be the man on the couch that wants him to peek out his door. And I think back to my father, young and strong and full of confusion. Still finding a moment for me.

On the couch as The Late Show began, there was a black-and-white graphic of a city with a big moon above it.  A magical city where my father and I sat drinking our milkshakes. In those moments, leaning against my father, I felt the world couldn’t be more perfect. It’s funny that all these years later I can still sing that song. I still can see down into that glass, where the vanilla milkshake floated in chunks.

But I can’t see him leaving.

About the author

Emmy-winning animator and author Mark Greene writes, speaks, coaches and consults on the challenges we face as men, women and non-binary people impacted by our dominance-based culture of masculinity. He was a senior editor of The Good Men Project. You can follow him on BlueSky at @remakingmanhood.bsky.social. A different version of this story was originally published on our NYC Dads Group blog with permission from him in 2014.

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This post is part of the #NoDadAlone campaign. Fathering Together/City Dads Group, the National At-Home Dad Network, and Fathers Eve are joining forces to amplify messages that help dads recognize we are not alone! Follow #NoDadAlone on Instagram, and learn more at NoDadAlone.com. Photo by Steve Johnson on Unsplash.

My daughter did something at school that disappointed my wife and me. Because of this, we instituted a way for her to monitor her words. She is now asked to consider three questions before she speaks: 

• Is it kind?
• Is it necessary?
• Is it respectful?

These questions help my daughter pause before she speaks and so far, so good. We have no intention of quieting our daughter, but she needs to consider more deeply what she says. We want her to develop and appreciate the purpose and potential impact of her words.

For instance, my daughter recently had a slightly humorous, very much 5-year-old incident occur with one of her closest friends. This friend was having a birthday and decided to give each of her classmates, including my daughter, a gift in honor of this. Later that day, my daughter, who had just the week before received a similar gift from this friend, made a decision. She was going to give the new gift to her mother.

My daughter’s reasoning: She already had one of these gifts and the colors on the second gift combined to make green, her mother’s favorite color. Very thoughtful, right? But, my daughter did not consider her friend’s feelings. Her friend was hurt and told her she couldn’t do that and then lashed out.

This was a perfect moment to discuss the “Is it Necessary?” question. Did her friend really need to know about this re-gifting idea? Wouldn’t it be better to just wait to ask me if sharing this gift with someone else was a good idea? Even though her intentions were noble, what she said hurt her friend’s feelings. So, this was an ideal teachable moment.

Using these three questions and creating this opportunity for growth is essential. What I continue to learn and appreciate is the work it takes to be a competent parent. It is hard. It takes time. A lot of time. Sometimes it defies logic. But, if you are not willing to put in that time and consistently address a teachable moment (there’s that term again!) in a clear, concise fashion, you are doing your child a great disservice. Your child deserves your “A” game. You can’t take plays off. 

Brainstorming solutions to these real-world problems is not only rewarding but utterly thrilling. But, not as thrilling as seeing how these efforts influence my daughter’s actions.

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A version of this first appeared on The Brown Gothamite and then here in 2017.

This blog post is part of the #NoDadAlone campaign. Fathering Together/City Dads Group, the National At-Home Dad Network, and Fathers Eve are joining forces to amplify messages that help dads recognize we are not alone! Follow #NoDadAlone on Instagram, and learn more at NoDadAlone.com.

Photo credit: aronbaker2 via Foter.com / CC BY

My kids are currently obsessed with tattoos.

Since we saw Disney’s Moana a few weeks ago, we’ve been watching the videos from the soundtrack on endless repeat. The title character ends up on an epic adventure with the demigod Maui (played by Dwayne Johnson, aka The Rock) from Polynesian mythology. His skin is covered in traditional tattoos that represent the various legends about him: Pulling fire from the underworld, raising islands out of the ocean with his magical fishing hook, harnessing wind, and giving humans coconuts. Watch the video:

We’ve gotten into a few long, kitchen table chats about the history of tattoos, culture, and personal choices. It’s been interesting because their mom has a tattoo and I don’t. We’ve discussed that, yes, getting tattoos can hurt and some people even choose to cover their whole bodies with tattoos. Or some, like me, have chosen not to get any. (To be fair, I’ve thought about getting one but can’t seem to find the right symbol for me.)

We’ve browsed the internet for tattoos people have of Disney characters, skulls, ancestors, tribal art and more. Yes, some people get them on their butts. Some are meant to be scary, some beautiful, some inappropriate for children — to which my son replied, “I want to see!”

Personal choices over Play-Doh

Which brings us to this morning.

After all this conversation about the deeply personal choices people make over what to do with their bodies, my daughter was quietly playing with Play-Doh when she turned to me and said:

“Dad, does everybody like … have to have a baby?”

She’s 5.

After gathering myself for one of those unexpected conversations we’re never quite prepared for as parents, I did my best to see the sincerity and innocence in her face as she discovered the power of identity, adulthood and freedom. Maybe even taking to heart some of the movie themes in Moana about staying true to yourself.

“No, honey,” I said after a moment of thought, “people usually choose to have kids because they want them. You get to decide that for yourself when you’re a grownup.”

Her reaction was neither positive nor negative. It was Zen. She seemed unmoved but contemplative.

The choice is yours, kid

So I continued to explain, hoping more information would help.

I said if you want to be a gymnastics coach — her current job goal — you may decide that spending time with your students is the most important thing to you. Having children is a lot of work. They always want to eat and have a parent play Play-Doh with them — a slight jab at her begging me to do so earlier.

She considered it for a minute and it was cool. No followup. No signs of distress.

Instead, her response was, “Well, my brother is going to be in space and I’ll be busy.”

With that unfinished thought, perhaps she’d need to give this some further thought in the future.

Her mother was a bit freaked out when I relayed the story to her over lunch. But I found it to be a sweet father-daughter conversation. It was honest and heartfelt and asked out of genuine concern. She was looking to me for answers. Times like these validate why I have chosen to be a stay-at-home parent. Under different circumstances, she’d have gotten a different answer from a different person. Instead, that few seconds of dialogue may influence her future and life philosophy on complex, mysterious topics like procreation.

It makes me happy that I’m there to help be the one to prepare her for whatever person she is going to one day become. I hope she realizes the correct answer to the question is: Be whoever you want to be.

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This post was originally published on Kyle’s blog, Newfangled Dad, in 2016 then on our defunct Chicago Dads Group blog. It is part of the #NoDadAlone campaign. Fathering Together/City Dads Group, the National At-Home Dad Network, and Fathers Eve are joining forces to amplify messages that help dads recognize we are not alone! Follow #NoDadAlone on Instagram, and learn more at NoDadAlone.com.

Photo by cottonbro studio via Pexels.

On the way home from preschool the other day, my daughter asked me if God could hear us.

This question was followed by, “Does He know where we live?” and “Does He see everything we do?”

My responses to these thought-provoking queries varied from “uhh …” to “err …”. Then came a final “maybe you should talk to your mother about this one.” My daughter came to her own conclusion, “I think He does.”

Oy.

I am an atheist.

There are many reasons why I don’t believe in God and why I’m not a big fan of organized religion. But you’ve probably heard them all expressed much more articulately than I could hope to do here. I’m not trying to change anyone’s mind, anyway. My wife believes in God although she does not attend temple services any more than I do. Instead, she observes religion in her own way. Encompassed in her belief system seems to be the need to constantly apologize to some dude who looks down on us from the clouds for all the silly, blasphemous things I say. (I’m sure she apologized for that last sentence … and probably for some stuff you haven’t gotten to yet.)

There are certain things I would not hesitate to force on my kids (or, at least, strongly guide them toward): a love of running, experimental eating, and an appreciation of good music and terrible movies. (Other than enjoying terrible movies – though the wrong kind of terrible – I’m pretty much failing in these efforts.)

The acceptance or rejection of God is different.

Maybe it’s even more different when you’re Jewish. I don’t believe in God, but I still identify as a Jew. There’s just so much cultural baggage. And, of course, the belief in one God (and then the rejection of Jesus as the Messiah) is a big part of why Jews have historically been discriminated against and why they stuck together in whatever land they found themselves in.

Most of the time, I don’t think about my Jewishness. But every once in a while, it becomes my defining characteristic. I was a little offended that all of the holiday songs at my daughter’s school’s Winter Holiday Extravaganza (or whatever it was called) were going to be Christmas-themed. Not one for Hanukkah.

I don’t have anything against Christmas songs. I just didn’t like the idea of my daughter and the few other Jewish students feeling left out. So I became the “Jewish dad,” speaking on behalf of all the Jewish parents. My daughter’s teacher, who is very sweet, was happy to add that old classic The Dreidel Song to the mix. My motivations had nothing to do with God – if God were mentioned in The Dreidel Song, I’d probably rather hear Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer for the thousandth time – just the cultural identity of being an American Jew.

I’ve always thought the concept of God exists because people fear death. Also, I believe religion is too often used to justify abhorrent behavior against “others.” However, before I cloud my kids’ minds with my cynicism, I want them to be open to the idea of a higher power. Maybe this belief will help them later in life. Maybe they will come to the same conclusions I have.

For now, though, I’m asking my daughter more questions than I am answering. When we got home, I asked her if she thought God could see us when we were in the car or if he could only see us when we were outside. Mostly, I wanted to find out if she thought God was always all around us or if her idea of a higher power correlated more closely with something that exists in nature. I also asked because I felt bad about not engaging in the topic when she first brought it up. She answered, hesitantly, that God … could see us in the car. In her answer, was the implicit question, “Am I right?”

Baby, if I only knew.

But no one does, despite the people who claim to “know Him,” no one knows. All we can do is decide for ourselves what we want to believe and put our faith in. I choose to put my faith in the things I can see or that can be proven: my family, myself, and, yeah, science. I do not always understand these things (my wife is an eternal mystery and science is, well, let’s just say I’m no rocket scientist). Hence, the faith part. But, through my own experiences, I know these things are real. Other people may feel the same way about God.

The most important part of religion for my wife is doing good for others (that’s why I love her). This fundamental aspect of Judaism is called tzedakah. For Yom Kippur – a holiday where Jews fast while thinking long and hard about all the sins they have committed throughout the year – my wife does not refrain from eating. Instead, she had the idea a few years ago to donate food to a local no-kill animal shelter filled with dogs and cats that have been abandoned and, in many cases, abused. We do this mitzvah (good deed) as a family. Our daughter picks out all the food at the grocery store and, at the shelter, tells the cats what she got them and asks if they’re hungry. It’s important that she feels instrumental in whatever charity we do.

If my kids do decide God is real, I hope they use him as a tool and not as a crutch. People can be moral without God and immoral with him. I don’t care what my kids believe. I care about who they are. I’ll try not to influence their spiritual beliefs, but I know that everything my wife and I do and say influences the people they will become.

God help me.

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This blog post, which first appeared here in 2014, is part of the #NoDadAlone campaign. Fathering Together/City Dads Group, the National At-Home Dad Network, and Fathers Eve are joining forces to amplify messages that help dads recognize we are not alone! Follow #NoDadAlone on Instagram, and learn more at NoDadAlone.com.

Photo by Nappy.

Remember the Alamo, stay-at-home dads and work-at-home fathers! After all, it’s not far from where HomeDadCon 2025 takes place in San Antonio, Texas, this autumn.

The annual conference for fathers whose full-time job is raising the kids runs from Sept. 11 to 13 at a hotel along the famous San Antonio Riverwalk. Attendees can expect to add to their parenting skills, support other dads and renew old friendships while making new ones.

Speakers and topics for the at-home dad conference have yet to be announced. Breakout topics at past conventions ranged from dealing with picky eaters to teaching children about sexual consent. Outreach or social activities are often part of the program. One already in the works for HomeDadCon 2025 is a 5K run.

The National At-Home Dad Network (NAHDN) organizes and operates this yearly event for stay- and work-at-home fathers who embrace parenting as their most important job. It allows them to network with other active fathers, learn from experts about various parenting and social issues, and take a brief respite from parenting duties. (DISCLOSURE: City Dads Group has been a long-time sponsor and partner with The National At-Home Dad Network for the at-home dads convention.)

HomeDadCon 2025 ticket, hotel information

A ticket to the HomeDadCon 2025 costs $295. The conference ticket includes:

• access to all event programs,
• three meals,
• a T-shirt and,
• a yearlong membership to the National At-Home Dad Network.

People who are already NAHDN members receive a $35 discount.

Discounted hotel reservations are available while they last at the Drury Plaza Hotel San Antonio Riverwalk, which doubles as the event venue. The cost is $179 a night plus taxes for double occupancy. This includes a free breakfast and a 90-minute evening reception with food, beer, wine and mixed drinks. For people wanting to split the rooming costs, the organization has a Discord group to help attendees find a roommate.

+ Buy a San Antonio HomeDadCon ticket +

The nonprofit National At-Home Dad Network offers advocacy, community, education, and support for families where fathers are their children’s primary caregivers. Its stated purpose is to empower fathers and champion a culture that recognizes them as competent parents.

The organization has expanded its work in recent years. It now runs parenting webinars and podcasts plus regular online gatherings for members to discuss issues. The National At-Home Dad Network has also recorded some of the past HomeDadCon sessions, some of which are made available only to dues-paying members.

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This post is part of the #NoDadAlone campaign. Fathering Together/City Dads Group, the National At-Home Dad Network, and Fathers Eve are joining forces to amplify messages that help dads recognize we are not alone! Follow #NoDadAlone on Instagram, and learn more at NoDadAlone.com.

Our daughter, Heloise, was conceived right before I turned 41. Being “old school” about these things, my wife and I kept her pregnancy a secret until early in the second trimester. When I announced our happy news to some colleagues over lunch, one cocked his head and asked gently, “You know you should make sure to get extra screening, right? You’ve got to watch out for the risks with paternal age effect.”

Until that moment, I knew next to nothing about paternal age effect (PAE). I started Googling as soon as I got back to my office. It promptly scared me.

“The genetic quality of sperm, as well as its volume and motility, all typically decrease with age,” Wikipedia announced. Some studies link advanced paternal age to infertility, an increased likelihood of miscarriage, and — perhaps most famously — to higher incidences of autism and bipolar disorder among offspring. My wife was already pregnant, so I figured we had the infertility thing licked this time around. But what about miscarriage and birth defects?

I called my wife’s obstetrician. He laughed.

“You’re barely in your 40s, Hugo,” he said. “The average age of women in our practice is 39. I’d guess the average age of prospective dads is 45. Around here, we don’t worry about a ‘paternal age effect’ until a man is in his 60s. Stop reading that junk on the internet and relax.” I hung up, hugely relieved.

Age brings patience, wisdom, bad backs

Her obstetrician’s practice is just outside of Beverly Hills, in West Los Angeles, and just over a mile from our home. His large medical group doesn’t necessarily specialize in caring for “older” pregnant women (and reassuring their often even older partners). In this part of town, it’s standard to see parents on playgrounds who in other parts of the country might easily be mistaken for grandmas and grandpas. Seven of the nine other children in my 3-year-old daughter’s pre-school class have dads older than me, and I’m pushing 45. My 37-year-old wife is the youngest of the moms. As far as we can tell, there is no sign of a negative “paternal age effect” anywhere in my daughter’s preschool.

But it’s not just in affluent areas like West Los Angeles and Manhattan that we’re seeing older first-time parents. As has been widely reported, birth rates in the United States have dropped sharply since the recession began in 2008, and are now at record lows. Even as the number of teen moms has never been lower, the number of women giving birth after age 40 has never been higher. Indeed, the birth rate is rising among women over 40, even as it falls for all the younger demographic brackets. Among heterosexual couples, married and unmarried, the male partner is statistically likelier to be the older one; this means the number of middle-aged first-time dads has risen substantially as well (some estimate by as much as 40% since 1980).

Because so many older fathers also partner with older mothers, it can be difficult to establish whether birth defects or disorders like autism are more closely tied to paternal or maternal age. Some doctors have asked whether the much-noted rise in childhood autism rates is tied to a rise in the percentage of older fathers. Some studies indicate a link; others don’t. Whether advanced paternal age is only a problem when matched with advanced maternal age or whether it stands alone as a risk factor is also still somewhat unclear.

Paternal age effect be damned

My wife and I are considering another child. I had that unborn baby in mind as I read the “paternal age effect” Wikipedia entry recently. The laundry list of studies suggesting at least a slightly increased risk for autism, Down’s Syndrome and bipolar disorder was frightening. But then I got to the end of the article.

Under the heading “Social Associations,” I read: “Later age at parenthood … is associated with better parenting practices.”

And I smiled.

I’m the president of the PTA for Heloise’s school. Our closest friends, not surprisingly, are the parents of her friends. My wife and I live in a community of fathers and mothers who became parents for the first time in middle age. At the endless rounds of meetings and birthday parties, we joke about our thinning hair and aching backs. We talk about how much more energy we’d have to chahttps://citydadsgroup.com/grandparents-acoustic-version-parents/se after our little ones if we were only 20 or 30 years younger. Sometimes — not often — we talk about the worries we have that we might not be around to see our grandchildren grow up. We are, after all, the same age that many of our grandparents were when we were born.

But perhaps particularly with the other older dads, we talk often about how much better suited we are for parenting in our 40s and 50s. Sure, the backaches are worse. But the compensation for reduced mobility is an exponential increase in patience. I know some wonderful young dads, but among my group of graying and thickening preschool papas, we’re universally convinced that what delights us now would have driven us crazy when we were in our 20s or 30s. More certain of who we are and more comfortable in our own skin, we’re better equipped to soothe our self-doubts for the sake of showing up for our kids.

In his most famous poem, Donald Justice writes: “Men at 40 learn to close softly/the doors to rooms they will not be coming back to.” For first-time fathers in their 40s, the slightly elevated risks of the “paternal age effect” are offset by our greater likelihood of financial stability, our increased reservoirs of equanimity, and, perhaps, a bit more hard-won wisdom. If we’ve done the job of growing up right, we’ve begun to shut some of those doors of workaholism, self-doubt, and indulgent self-absorption to which we were prone in our anxiety-ridden 20s. To put it simply, we’re young enough to kick the ball around and patient enough to do it (almost) as long as our kids want.

We’ll just need to take two Advil when we’re finally done.

About the author

Hugo Schwyzer has taught history and gender studies at Pasadena City College where he developed the college’s first courses on “Men and Masculinity” and “Beauty and Body Image.” A writer and speaker as well as a professor, Hugo lives with his wife, daughter, and six chinchillas in Los Angeles. He also co-authored the autobiography of supermodel Carré Otis, Beauty, Disrupted.

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This post, first published on Role/Reboot and republished here with permission in 2012, is part of the #NoDadAlone campaign. Fathering Together/City Dads Group, the National At-Home Dad Network, and Fathers Eve are joining forces to amplify messages that help dads recognize we are not alone! Follow #NoDadAlone on Instagram, and learn more at NoDadAlone.com.

Photo by Mikhail Nilov via Pexels

Are all your attempts at animal-related dad jokes cat-astrophes? When you doggedly try for howls of laughter from your kids, do you get only catcalls and horse coughing?

Fear not, fellow fathers! We’ve got animal dad jokes aplenty! Dog jokes, cat jokes, bird jokes, fish funnies — you name the species, we got it. These will delight the little ones and roll the eyes of the big ones.

How did we do it? We scoured the far corners of the oceans, zoos and barnyards (but mostly the internet) for the best and/or worst animal-related jokes, riddles and puns.

But wait — there’s more! After you finish these, check out our music-related dad jokes. Why? Because while you can tune a piano, you can’t tune a fish? OK, enough fish puns. It’s time to scale back.

Enjoy!

Best animal (dog, cat, etc.) dad jokes, puns, humor

Q. What did the lion say after he ate the comedian?
A. “I feel funny.”

Q. Why shouldn’t you play cards in the African savannah?
A. Because it’s full of cheetahs.

Q. Why can’t a leopard hide?
A. Because he’s always spotted.

Q. Why couldn’t the dog see a psychiatrist?
A. Because he isn’t allowed on the couch.

Q. What do cows do on Friday nights?
A. They go to the moooovies.

Q. What’s black and white and blue?
A. A depressed zebra.

Q. Why don’t horses get divorced?
A. They have stable relationships.

Q. What do you call a pig that lost his voice?
A. Disgruntled.

Q. What did the buffalo say to his son when he went to work?
A. Bison!

Q. Which side of a goose has the most feathers?
A. The outside.

Q. Why did the hamster quit his exercise routine?
A. He felt he was just going in circles and not getting anywhere.

Q. What do you call a cow that has no milk?
A. An udder failure.

Q. What do you call another cow that won’t give milk?
A. A milk dud.

Q. What did the alien say to the cat?
A. “Take me to your litter.”

Q. What do you call a sleeping bull?
A. A bull-dozer.

Q. How do you catch a unique rabbit?
A. Unique up on him.
Q. How do you catch a tame rabbit?
A. Tame way.

Q. Why do cats make terrible storytellers?
A. They only have one tail.

Q. Why do sharks swim in salt water?
A. Because pepper water makes them sneeze.

Q. What happened when the dog swallowed a clock?
A. He got ticks.

Q. What is a cat’s favorite kitchen tool?
A. The whisker.

Q. Why did the octopus blush?
A. Because it saw the ocean’s bottom.

Q. What’s worse than raining cats and dogs?
A. Hailing taxis.

Q. Why was the vulture not allowed to bring two dead raccoons on a plane?
A. Because he was allowed only one carrion.

Q. Have you seen the dog bowl?
A. I never knew he could!

Q. Why was the mama bird sad when her baby moved out?
A. She had empty nest syndrome.

Q. Why did the crab refuse to share?
A. Because he’s shellfish.

Q. What did the dolphin say to the other fish?
A. You need a porpoise in life.

Q. What do you get when you cross a fish and an elephant?
A. Swimming trunks.

Q. Did you hear about the emu that grew so big that the rest of its group shunned it?
A. Yes, it was ostrich-sized.

Q. Why is a swordfish’s nose 11 inches long?
A. Because if it were 12 inches long it’d be a foot.

Q. What do you call a rabbit that has fleas?
A. Bugs bunny.

Q. What do you do if your dog chews a dictionary?
A. Take the words out of his mouth!

Q. Why do chicken coops only have two doors?
A. Because if they had four, they would be chicken sedans!

Q. What did the horse say after it tripped?
A. “Help! I’ve fallen and I can’t giddyup!”

Q. Why don’t dogs or cats make good dancers?
A. Because they have two left feet.

Q. What do you call a horse that lives next door?
A. A neigh-bor.

Q. How do horses stay in such great shape?
A. They keep a stable diet.

Q. If lights run on electricity and cars run on gas, what do dogs and cats run on?
A. Their paws.

Q. What do you get from a pampered cow?
A. Spoiled milk.

Q. What do you call a thieving alligator?
A. A crook-o-dile.

Q. Where did the sheep go on vacation?
A. The Baaaahamas.

Q. What sound do porcupines make when they kiss?
A. Ouch.

Q. Why do cows go to New York?
A. To see the moosicals.

Q. What do you give a dog with a fever?
A. Mustard, its the best thing for a hot dog!

Q. Where do killer whales hear music?
A. Orca-stras!

Animal, dog, cat dad jokes photo by Mark Glancy via Pexels.

The conversation started over breakfast, a thread to a tangent passed with pepper and more coffee. It stuck like syrup in a mustache.

Eventually, it moved from a stranger-coveted table in an increasingly busy restaurant to another prolonged standstill in the parking lot. Two family members danced a tango of societal and political opinion while everyone else kicked leaves and waited for car doors to open.

Then it continued in the front seat for another 20 minutes. I sat in the back with a 5-year-old on my right. His toy made a loud, electronic shriek, apparently forever, and it was always within an inch of my face. Frankly, I was happy to have it, never pushing it away for the entire ride. It kept the conversation at bay.

Perhaps it seems odd that I wasn’t involved in the debate. After all, my thoughts on politics and society are published everywhere (including this site), often. I’m not known for staying quiet.

I was, figuratively, biting my tongue.

This past Christmas I had lost my cool — justifiably so, but it was still rather embarrassing — in a similar conversation. I had yelled, cursed, turned shades of the season and frothed with spittle. It was an outburst that had been building for over a year. Disgust, fear, anger and tension — I suddenly unleashed it in the face of someone who didn’t deserve it, at least not in the form I presented it. I vowed I would not repeat myself, despite everything being 12 months worse than anyone could ever want to imagine.

So I sat in the backseat, letting a child pierce my ears with laser screams. His face was full of soundless laughter.

Every so often I would catch a word or two from the front. The argument seemed to center on whether most people in the world (but, specifically, in the United States) are good. One swore that was the case. One was not convinced. They both had their reasons.

For context, the participants in this particular conversation fell on different sides of several aisles, including (but not limited to) politics, age, religion, education, race and tax bracket. In most cases, I tended to agree with one of them more than the other. It’s not a secret.

My 12-year-old son summed it up best as we all loitered in the parking lot: “I don’t know what they’re arguing about, but I know who is right.”

He wasn’t wrong.

Yet, the current conversation, the matter of innate goodness, was something of an outlier.

One argued that most people are good, something I want to believe (and often do, based upon the majority of those I have met). The point, however, was tinted in shades of rose, the hue of making great again that which was only a matter of privilege and perspective.

The case against was full of headlines and the burning world around us. I only needed to look out the window, the ground black and smoldering in the aftermath of recent, literal fires, to find agreement there.

And I did, beyond the face of a laughing boy, and deep into the valley of burnt homes, the bones of buildings and the ghosts already haunting them, stretched every stitch of answer.

Most people are good. At least, they believe themselves to be.

But what does “good” even mean?

What is considered good by one person may not qualify for another. One act, intended and believed as wholehearted goodness, may be perceived as wrong, hurtful or offensive by others. Good, like most things, is relative.

For my part, I try to teach my kids to spread kindness, social awareness, empathy and action, all of which I believe to be at the core of good. Yet, I am constantly mocked and threatened for it. I am quite sure those people casting judgment upon me don’t believe themselves wrong. Far from it. They think of themselves as the good guys.

We got to the beach, as we always do, the ground of ash finally giving way to swaths of sand, mere feet from the ocean’s edge. The toy’s digital echo buried beneath a cry of seagulls and the pop of waves breaking into cold, wet blankets.

My boys appeared from the other half of our caravan, barefoot and pants rolled high.

“We’re going to go walk in the water,” they said.

“Good,” I replied.

They knew exactly what I meant.

Photo by Whit Honea.

If “Born in the USA” has taught us anything, it’s that people will cheerfully blare any song with a catchy beat regardless of the incongruously depressing lyrics. These days every store you walk into is legally required to play Andy Williams’ “It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year” at least once an hour. Tucked into that ditty about holiday cheer is this little chestnut:

There’ll be scary ghost stories
and tales of the glories
Of Christmases long, long ago

Wait – what?

Scary ghost stories? Scary Christmas ghost stories!?

On the surface, it seems like a lyric a few months past its Halloween expiration date. But scratch the tinseled surface and Christmas has some weird undertones.

What’s so jolly about a young, panicked woman giving birth in a filthy stable in the dead of night? Or an immortal being who breaks into houses and whose omnipresent gaze is fixed on your every move? Watching. Judging.

Life’s ghosts don’t take a Christmas vacation, and hardships don’t plan around your holiday calendar. So as I sat with my mother in hospice, two days before Christmas a few years back, it was hard not to notice the almost purgatorial nature of her room. At the nurse’s station outside, people flitted by – chatting next to holiday décor. In her room, it was dark and still. There was no longer the need for the expensive machines she had been hooked to for the past 10 months. No beeping or dinging. Just her shallow breath and closed eyes.

Ours had always been a difficult relationship. She was what some would describe as a “formidable woman.” Her superpower was bending reality to justify her actions. On the rare occasion where she owned up to being in the wrong, she would happily tell you why it was really someone else’s fault. Likely yours.

Becoming a father put into relief how differently we were wired. My journey into parenthood has taught me the value of self-reflection – examining why I am where I am, what I’m feeling, and what lessons I have learned. And how am I going to impart that to the two malleable humans who are always learning from me, whether I want them to or not? It’s a rich and rewarding road, but the tradeoff is it doesn’t end until you do. There’s no finish line. And you never get to fold your arms and say, “So there. Checkmate.” Reflection versus justification. My mother and I simply had different approaches to life.

But, oh, how she was loyal. I knew she would pitch a tent and just live in that room if the tables were turned. If half of life is showing up, she showed up – even if you didn’t realize you needed someone there. That’s also how she was wired. I admired that. I wanted to be that kind of person. And she brought me into this world. She deserved someone to stand sentry as her body prepared to leave it. The someone should be me.

Hours later, my thoughts turned to another family. The one I chose to build with the woman I love. A year of managing my mother’s illness had taken me away from them so often – missing moments big and small. They deserved my showing up as well, especially at Christmas. In the dark, I gathered my things and stood over her and said the last words I hoped she would hear. “I love you. … Goodbye.” And I left

The next morning my phone rang. It was the hospice. At 7:30 a.m. On Christmas Eve. They weren’t calling to discuss paperwork.

Christmas Day, my wife and I had to sit down our 6-year-old and tell her grandma died. She had known pets who had passed on, and over the year I kept her up to date as best I could on what was going on with her grandmother, even though she might not make it. All this she handled with surprising grace. But the end hit her hard. Amid the debris of wrapping paper and toys, I held my crying daughter and told her all the things I had researched to say. I spoke honestly about how special their relationship was. We would make a memory book of all the fun times they shared. I also could see her telling a future therapist, “I think it all started when I was 6 and my dad interrupted Christmas to tell me THAT MY FRIGGIN’ GRANDMOTHER WAS DEAD.”

I’ll give my mother this much, she had a flair for the dramatic. Every Christmas Eve from now on I’ll be haunted by her ghost, like Jacob Marley visiting Scrooge. As for my daughter, well, we’ve all changed in this last year. Kids are strong and resilient all right, but you can’t just say that with a shrug and go get a snack. There’ll be checking in, talking, listening, observing. As I said, no finish line.

If you want Christmas “tales of the glories,” you’ll have to take the Christmas “ghost stories.” That’s what relationships leave you with – even at this time of year. Especially at this time of year. Whenever we can celebrate the holidays with people and music again, you’re likely to be visited by a ghost or two as everyone is swaying to a favorite seasonal tune – be it traditional or hip. And if someone is wondering why you aren’t moved like they are, just give them this sage response: “Well, because, I’m listening to the words.”

Christmas ghost stories of photo by © RK1919 / Adobe Stock.

That Tiffany song. You know the one. It played in sixth grade at my first school dance.

There I stood for the first time in close physical proximity to a female who didn’t birth me and in a way that would’ve said, “Hey there, beautiful,” if a chubby boy in a peach knit cardigan sweater and a regrettable volume of Drakkar Noir could have exuded such a brand of clumsy middle school pre-sexual energy.

These are not memories I reflect upon so often that they spill like spring rain from an overly saturated flower pot. These faint brush strokes and passing scents remain with me after a quarter century of neglect. So much new and good has come that there isn’t room for what won’t promote growth. Onward and upward. Everything else goes overboard.

This is awkwardness in retrospect, the opposite of nostalgia. I didn’t enjoy my grade school career, to put it bluntly. That first dance was a tidy microcosm of my school life. Mostly alone. Portly. Embarrassed, before I knew what meaning the word could hold. And with a girl who, rightfully, didn’t see me as a threat. It would be years before I’d realize this was the role of a lifetime.

My 10-year-old daughter has her first school dance this Friday evening, a sock hop with music from her grandparents’ heyday on the cutting-a-rug circuit. She’s over the moon with excitement, as am I, for her.

She’s said some kids are asking each other to the dance, less a date, from what I understand, as it is a ritual of accompaniment. No one wants to be alone. She has asked a friend, a girl, if she’d “go with her.” That’s great because none of the fifth graders will likely have full dance cards.

This dance will be charming in its formality. Bow ties will be straightened by moms who’ll find it damn near impossible to keep their hands from shaking long enough to capture a single clear iPhone photo to commemorate the night. Car doors will swing open and glittering silver-and-black shoes will clatter down the concrete walkway to the grade school gym while dads drive back home in cars emptied of their most precious cargo. I think we’re alone now. There doesn’t seem to be anyone around.

As I write this, it is Tuesday afternoon. I sit here anxious for the 8 p.m. Friday pickup time to arrive. But not because I want my daughter to stop dancing. It’s because I cannot wait to listen as she puts her head on my shoulder and recounts the entire Technicolor evening in hi-def detail.

Those will be memories worth letting soak in for a quarter century or more.

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This blog post, which first appeared here in 2017, is part of the #NoDadAlone campaign. Fathering Together/City Dads Group, the National At-Home Dad Network, and Fathers Eve are joining forces to amplify messages that help dads recognize we are not alone! Follow #NoDadAlone on Instagram, and learn more at NoDadAlone.com.

A version of this first appeared on Out with the Kids. First dance photo: gsdsw via Foter.com / CC BY-NC-SA)