Michael Chabon summarized my feelings best. It is so much easier to be a good father. The bar for success is just much lower. I harken back to my spouse and his experiences getting up on Saturday mornings after our fourth son was born. He would awaken with the baby, feed him, then bundle all four kids into various car seats and set off to do the weekly grocery shopping. And it never failed. Someone would invariably comment on what a fabulous father he was. What would it take for a mother to get a similar rise out of a stranger? Chabon postulates she would have to perform an emergency tracheotomy on one child while simultaneously breast-feeding another. While I think that is an exaggeration, only by degree. He is in the right ball park.
And yet, despite it all--the inflated expectations, the propensity to fail to meet even minimal standards for performance, the lack of an adequate play book from which to choose, and the daily challenges to that seem impossible to unknot--this is the very best job I have ever had. Thank you, Joel, for making me do it.
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