Father's Day I: Revelations from the Muck

Many dads remember the first time they gazed upon or held their child as a transformative moment.

For me, changing my son's diaper was that moment. I suddenly understood my own father. My father fancies himself a leftist radical (although his day job is as a real estate attorney – small practice specializing in condominiums – and he gets twitchy about increased regulation of the homebuilding industry).* I have moved away – nay fled – his worldview. He took my heated arguments with a placid magnanimity. Now that I’ve changed my son’s diapers I see why. No matter what I do or say, he will always remember picking poop out of my tuchus. Whatever I say or accomplish, my father sees it as just more of the same.

When my children decide to reject everything I believe (perhaps by becoming evangelical Christians who belong to PETA) I will remember changing their diapers and think of their fads of the moment as more of the same.

*Also, he never had radical hair. That may have been prudence, but I believe it was really genetics.