It can be hard to express your feelings as a father sometimes. Not so much because men are expected to bottle up their emotions, but because the emotions that come with being a dad can be so overwhelming and complex. It’s a rush of a million feelings: love, joy, fear, absurdity, exhaustion, responsibility, motivation, and primal attachment.
No one prepared you for any of this…and it’s unlike anything you’ve ever dealt with before. How do you express it? How do you let your family know what they mean to you? How they have you wrapped around their finger, how they are your everything?
Maybe the line from The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse will suffice. “Sometimes I want to say I love you all,” says the mole, “but I find it difficult.” “Do you?” says the boy. “Yes, so I say something like I’m glad we are all here.”
I’m glad we are all here. Isn’t that the perfect way to capture how you feel? When you look out at your crowded table at dinner? When you drive them in the car to the park or to school? When you sit on the couch eating cereal, soaking in the garbage time? When you tuck them in bed at night, not quite sure what the morning will bring?
Joy and gratitude that you’re together, that this is happening. That’s something to be glad about. That you have each other. That we’re all here, right now, despite it all.
