It was Tomas’s 20th birthday yesterday. (How did we celebrate? He’s home (yay!), so we’d planned on doing a bit of a party, but he got sick as soon as he got home, so we’ve pushed that off a bit.)
It only occurred to me yesterday that each birthday he has also marks the anniversary of me becoming a father for the first time. 20 years of that? It’s definitely a noteworthy occasion to observe. And it’s gotten me thinking about how little I knew when I first became a father, and how much that’s changed since.
Those first few months were especially rough for Denisa and me. It’s hard to believe that for something that important, you have to go in more or less completely blind. Not that you can’t ask friends for help, or read up on parenting advice, but ultimately each child is different, and it’s up to you and your spouse to muddle through it all as best as you can.
And it never gets much easier. Not for the first child, at least. Each step of the way, you’re inundated by firsts. First time in school. First time through middle school. First time through high school. First time applying to colleges. And yes, I suppose it’s not technically your first time dealing with each of those, because you dealt with each of them on your own when you went through it all yourself, but doing it as a parent is a whole new ballgame.
Are there things I wish I had done differently? 100%. For starters, I wouldn’t go down the spiral slide with him when he was 2. That’s one broken leg avoided right there. But there are plenty of things I know I did wrong that aren’t as clean cut, and that’s just off the top of my head, without asking him for any input. (I tend to think there are a lot of things he wishes I’d done differently that I don’t even remember, and vice versa.) You do your best, and you keep on pushing forward, because it’s not like there are any save points you can just reset to. No takebacks in parenting.
All that said, I think Denisa and I have done a pretty good job, all things considered. We definitely have tried our best, and that’s worth something right there. We’re proud of all of our kids, and proud of everything they’re becoming. They’re good kids, sometimes in spite of the mistakes we made. Still, you don’t get to be a level anything without a fair bit of trial and error.
In any case, a happy (if a day belated) birthday to Tomas!