58. Love Is . . . Still Being a Father

Hobbit

The family therapist was standing up now, dry erase marker in hand, asking me to describe a hand-drawn image she drew of our family. She was a decent illustrator.

“Where are you in here?” she asked.

That question again. She had asked before. She was prodding me. She knew something I didn’t. Not yet. Brain too thick. Me no let spark in.

I didn’t know it then, but my intuition was right. She was guiding me, sweet biscuits, ever so gently toward a spark.

The fuzz in my brain wasn’t lighting.

The quiet in the room was deafening.

It took me a few times to get the words out. My brain and my mouth were like two fish trying to kiss.

“Like I am made of dotted lines,” I said.

She handed me the marker.

“Show me.”

I took the marker and went to the board. I used my finger to breakup the solid outline of the cartoon character who represented me. The more line I took off, the less the remaining outline mattered.

“What’s going on?” she asked, humanely.

My brain and my mouth finally were sucking face. The circuit was complete.

“I’m being erased.”

---

I’ve been quietly disappearing for years.

Not gone. Suspended in this space—if “space” is the right word. Wherever I am, time moves differently. Memories don’t align with real time.

And now, everywhere I look, I see fathers.

Jv, Jb, Aa, Mc, Ty, Dd, Jm, Dr, and Td come to mind.

They listen to their kid like a buck perks to the crack of a stick.

They’re also on standby. They’re not out patrolling, just present.

Years go by.

The fuzzy snowflake of meaning in Chapter 13* slowly crystallizes.

The kid who once trusted his dad to tickle his armpit now has someone else to do it.

The kid who wanted to shop at thrift stores now has their own style and uses their own money to buy their own clothes. They’re not just doing okay. They’re dazzling.

I see dads all the time. They come in and out of focus.

You may not always see them. But they’re there.

*Tao Te Ching - Lao Tzu - chapter 13

Accept disgrace willingly.
Accept misfortune as the human condition.

What do you mean by "Accept disgrace willingly"?
Accept being unimportant.
Do not be concerned with loss and gain.
This is called "accepting disgrace willingly."

What do you mean by "Accept misfortune as the human condition"?
Misfortune comes from having a body.
Without a body, how could there be misfortune?

Surrender yourself humbly; then you can be trusted to care for all things.
Love the world as your own self; then you can truly care for all things.


(translation by Gia-fu Feng and Jane English)

Owly

“Sometimes I have to remind myself that I’m a father,” Hobbit says.

He says it so casually—just as if it’s a fact that slips away sometimes, an afterthought.

And when he says it, I time-travel back to many moments I found him openly sobbing at the kitchen table after hearing that his son was back in the hospital and didn’t want him to come. Between the words of his casual self-reminder, I hear the full-throated wail. I see him grabbing his hair and pulling his hands down his face. I feel the heaviness in my heart for him.

Hobbit’s kids haven’t spoken to him in over seven years.
He’s found a healthy way to compartmentalize that pain.
But sometimes, I still feel it.

There’s a sadness there that I can’t fully touch. They don’t know what they’re missing. He makes the best fluffy pancakes. His hugs have healing frequencies. His laughter is slathered into the paint our home.

I’m sad because Father’s Day rolls around and Hobbit doesn’t even think to celebrate himself. He doesn’t expect to be seen in that role. And I’m sad because, in his own way, he’s still showing up as a father every single day, even though his own son and daughter choose not to participate.

Estranged from his kids and largely cut off by his own father, who remarried and slowly erased his previous family like a dry-erase board wiped clean, Father’s Day for Hobbit just isn’t a thing.

But it should be.
Even now. Even still.

Because Hobbit is a father.

So this Father’s Day, Hobbit may not acknowledge or even remember that it’s a special holiday made just for him . . . but I do.

And the love he gives keeps spreading—just not always where it started.

Parent Alienation and Adult-Child Estrangement is far more common than people like to admit. 1 in 4 Americans is currently estranged from a family member, most commonly between adult children and parents. And while each story has its own truth, our cultural language around estrangement is often too tidy: the narrative goes, “If someone cut contact, they must have had a good reason.”

Maybe they did. Sometimes it is the healthiest thing. Boundaries are necessary. Autonomy matters.

Estrangement can be a sacred act of reclaiming agency, especially for adult children healing from harm.

But estrangement isn’t always abuse. And parental alienation is real—messy, murky, and often left out of the mainstream narrative. Therapists increasingly encourage no-contact, and while that empowers some, it devastates others.

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