I've been in this weird phase of life lately. I turned 30 a week ago, I'm married to a beautiful woman who has completely captured my heart and who just brought my second son into the world 2 months ago. It's nerve-racking to think that I'm going to be responsible for teaching those 2 all the things that it means to be a man. -- When I had to learn it all -- mostly -- on my own.
A couple days ago I re-read an article that a friend of mine, Alisha, posted on Facebook back in June. This article was about the changing ideas of what makes a man; a man. You can read it here - and it's really a fascinating read from the historical shift in responsibilities and impact that a man has on his family over the last 50 or so odd years. As I read through it, it spoke about the sexism of the times and how gender isn't as big of a factor in the role that a man or a woman has in the home and even the workplace anymore.
Now I was born in the late 80's to divorced parents with a mother who worked incredibly hard to provide the best life she could for me and a father who was absent from my life outside of his occasional 'mandated' visitation rights. -- So I never put a whole lot of stock in my father's ability to teach me what it meant to be a man because although I watched his actions and I listened to his words what I gathered from him was this:
Being a man is about financial success. Working hard, making money, living well. That is what makes a good man.
That's all well and good; for him - he owns his own company and makes enough for him to be happy. He has found success in his career. Yet, he spent so much time working that he missed out on the majority of my childhood. He was never actually present in my life, so I grew up thinking that being a man meant fending for yourself. As Julius Campbell says in Remember the Titans:
"Nah.. nah... what I'm gonna do is look out for myself and I'ma get mine."
That is what I took away from watching my dad. It's all about me, it's all about what's mine. The struggles of life and all the situations that arise only affect me as I choose them to. I am in control of my future and as long as there is financial success, then I have become a man and my life will be good. Because that is what I walked away with, I chose to simply walk away completely. I have not spoken with my own father in nearly 10 years because I decided that my manhood, my masculinity, wouldn't be defined by my financial success. I would be defined by the relationships that I keep. This concept was a total mind shift from what my own father showed me, and it's thanks to, for the most part, my uncles.
I grew up with two incredible uncles, Dave and Don, who didn't have boys of their own until I was in my late teenage years, so they stepped right in where they felt my father missed the mark. One uncle was the outdoorsy-type, they both are actually, but Don was more-so. I still vividly remember the mornings when he would show up at my house at 4am after the 50 minute drive from his house to take my fishing. At the time I didn't really correlate what he was doing for me to how it would impact my own understanding of being a man. I anxiously waited for him on those mornings. We would go sit in the boat, and often our conversations were limited, but when we did talk, it was always about life and how to cope. He, without me knowing, was teaching me something about being a man. He was showing me:
Being a man is about building connections. Being available, communicating, investing in relationships. That is what makes you a good man.
For me, this was a bit of a shock because I'm normally a very introverted person, and up until my uncle started investing time into my life and building that connection I never talked about my heart or my feelings.
When I learned 3.5 years ago that my at-the-time girlfriend (shortly soon after wife) was pregnant; we started making plans for our wedding and although it was bit of a shock to my family (coming from a fairly religious and conservative background) Don asked me out for an early breakfast and one the first thing he said to me wasn't "what were you thinking?" it was "I'm proud of the man you've become and I know you'll be a good husband and a great dad."
That's a great example of manhood and imparting that same manhood onto me. I was scared out of my mind as to what the future meant for me, for my soon to be wife and for the child that she was carrying. I still at that point in my life didn't understand what being a man was, and I was 26 years old.
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So circling back to my question of how in the world can I impart that same understanding to my own boys, when I'm still - in part - figuring it out myself? Honestly, even though I don't really have an answer to how I'm going to do it... I know that I have found such immeasurable personal growth and come incredibly far in my own walk towards manhood that my sons look at me and know that they are in good hands, and ultimately that's all that matters. If they believe in me... Then I can't fail.