When Men Do Nothing - Voice Male Magazine

FROM THE EDITOR
By Rob Okun
Choreographing the
Father-Son Dance
Rain was gently falling overhead;
clouds obscured the stars. I was safe
and dry in my son Jonah’s tent. I
turned off the flashlight and dozed. I was
sleeping a parent’s weekend sleep—one ear
open waiting for his safe return. Old habits
die hard; I needn’t have been so vigilant. He
had only gone in search of cell service to call
his girlfriend to say goodnight; he was years
past high school curfews.
Jonah is our youngest and had recently
finished college. As a graduation present
we were spending the weekend at a writing
workshop at a conference center and camp
we both have a long history with and deeply
love. We hadn’t done something like this for
some time—just the two of us going away
for a few days—so the gift was as much for
me as for him.
Fathers and mothers benefit from oneon-one
time with their progeny, regardless
of their age. Parenting adult children (Jonah
has three older sisters in their late twenties
and early thirties) isn’t as straightforward
as raising younger kids. Hopefully, after a
few decades on the job, we’ve learned to
shift from the spread-the-peanut-butter-onthe-bread
Mother/Father role to TC (trusted
consultant) available 24/7. It’s a practice,
though, learning to balance offering support
with keeping hands off. I don’t always get
it right. The weekend Jonah and I spent
together afforded me plenty of opportunities
to practice. I had to pay attention, knowing
when it was time to lead and when it was
time to follow in the beautiful, complicated
father-son dance we’d been choreographing
for more than two decades.
When he returned to the tent, unzipping
the flap slowly so as not to wake me, I whispered
a greeting. “Everything okay?” “Yeah,
Dad. Everything’s great.”
Once he’d settled into his sleeping bag,
we lay in the dark for a long time talking; my
heart brimming over with happiness. It was
not about the content—rich and varied—it
was about how comfortable we were, how
relaxed, how intimate. For me, the weekend
had been a success before it had barely
begun. I slept deeply until a hard rain fell at
first light.
As private and personal as these moments
are, isn’t it better for men to talk about them
with one another than bury them under the
cloak of men’s silence? How else can we
break free of our legacy of isolation, of too
rarely sharing our feelings? How can we
hope to transform our lives if we are stuck
in our silos of individual invulnerability?
How can fathers help raise sons to access
their emotional lives if we aren’t willing to
access ours?
Becoming a father, of course, isn’t necessary
for every man to become a full adult,
to find his way as a man. But even for
those who aren’t fathers, there are plenty of
occasions to mentor, to “uncle”—to access
that part of ourselves that innately knows
how to nurture. There’s a tenderness to
fathering that gets lost in popular culture’s
stick figure sketch—dad as good-natured
bumbler. Happily, change is afoot; it’s time
to quicken the pace.
As more men step forward to honor
their roles as fathers (see the moving
Fathering columns by Jeremy Adam Smith
and Gregory Collins on pages 22 and 23),
there’s an opportunity for even more of us
to take the initiative to balance our private,
personal approach to fathering with a more
public, political one. Our underrepresented
voices in the ongoing war against women,
for example, is a case in point. It is an apt
moment for fathers to organize as fathers on
behalf of our wives, daughters and sisters—
biological and otherwise. It’s a powerful time
for fathers to embrace that enduring insight
from the women’s movement: the personal
is political. Rather than stand mute when old
school men seek to impose their will on decisions
that rightly belong to women, imagine
campaigns that begin with “As a father, I…”
The Fatherhood Brigade remains an underdeveloped
force for social change.
After the weekend, Jonah went back to
his house and garden and I returned to mine.
If previous patterns prevailed, some days
would pass before I’d hear from him. As
difficult as it is going from total contact to no
contact at all, it gave me a chance to reflect
on our time together. In quiet moments
throughout the weekend, whether attending
the same workshop or sitting together at
meals, I’d look over at him engaged in
conversation and marvel at the man he has
become. Considerably more emotionally
intelligent than I was in my early twenties,
what I realized was this: In the father-son
dance we’ve been practicing since he was
a baby, we had learned more than just how
to avoid stepping on each other’s toes. Now
we were learning how to balance the space
between leading and following. That lesson,
I realized, applies to all the others parts of
my life—from my work with men to my
relationships at home. In the space between
leading and following is everything I need
to know.
Voice Male editor Rob Okun can be reached at
rob@voicemalemagazine.org.
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