Small Joys of Fatherhood
Phantom rocking, the dad nod, and other things nobody tells you about
Nobody tells you that the best parts of Fatherhood are often the smallest. Everyone talks about the big stuff: the first steps, the first words, the overwhelming love that hits you in ways you couldn’t have imagined before it happened. These joys build slowly, across weeks and months and years, and it can be hard to see clearly when you’re in the middle of it.
What you notice day to day are the difficulties: the sleep deprivation, the relentlessness, the negotiating with someone who has no interest in being reasonable. If you aren’t careful, the challenges start to feel like the whole picture.
Small joys happen all of the time, hidden in plain sight. Below are just a few I’ve noticed whilst making a conscious effort to pay attention to the moments that make me smile.
Phantom Rocking
Rocking a baby is so unbelievably effective it feels a bit like cheating. Whenever I am holding a baby, whether it’s one of the twins or, two years ago, my oldest, I am rocking. Jiggling, bouncing, swaying. Rocking. Occasionally I find myself standing somewhere without a baby and catch myself gently rocking. Once I was chatting to another Dad and we both realised we were bouncing in sync, neither holding a baby. It raises the question: who is really being soothed?
The Dad Nod
You see another Dad: pushing a stroller with a napping toddler, carrying a baby in a sling, trying to unfold a yet-to-be-understood pram. You walk past each other, you make eye contact, you nod. You understand.
Conversations with Strangers
Never have I encountered such warmth and kindness from strangers as I have when carrying young babies. People want to see them, of course, because babies are adorable. But it’s the words that stay with you. Almost always it’s someone older, someone who’s been there, who knows how wonderful it is but also how relentless those early days can be. A gentle, soft hand on my arm while waiting with the twins for my wife to take our toddler to playgroup, and the words “You’re doing really well.” That melted everything. Days of exhaustion, gone. I hope I can do the same for someone in twenty or thirty years.
Diggers
Or more broadly, construction sites and equipment. Construction equipment is genuinely fascinating. A machine the size of a house that can rip the ground apart, or a wrecking ball swinging through a building like it’s made of paper. At some point, growing up means pretending you’re not interested in that anymore. I had suppressed this childish infatuation entirely, until I had a toddler who is positively obsessed with tractors, diggers, cement mixers and best of all, wrecking balls. Now I have an excuse to stop, stare, and marvel at the ginormous wheels, huge scoops and “caty-pilly tracks.”
Clicking the Car Seat
First try. Click. I am invincible.
A Hot Dinner
Bonus points for being able to eat it with both hands. Double bonus points for not having to eat at speed-eating-contest pace. Seneca once suggested1 fasting and living rough for a while, then asking yourself if that was really so bad. I never thought twice about sitting down to a hot meal before becoming a parent; I’m grateful for the occasional reminder that it is truly something to relish.
Quiet
I used to hate quiet. I needed something happening. I would fill any gap with music, podcasts or movies. Quiet meant absence. Quiet now means peace. When there is no crying, shouting, smashing, banging, burping or screaming, I fall into an almost meditative state.
My dad, when I was younger, had a photograph of a bench on his wall. Underneath, in his handwriting, it simply said: “Sometimes I sit and think, and other times I just sit.” I had no idea what that meant for most of my life. I do now.
Seeing Your Wife Rest
Occasionally I walk into the living room and she is asleep, babies resting peacefully nearby. I know what her day looked like: the feeding, the carrying, the endless patience for things that would have broken me by lunchtime. Seeing someone who gives that much of herself all day, every day, finally getting some peace is one of the most beautiful things I know.
https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Moral_letters_to_Lucilius/Letter_18The Cradle" by Berthe Morisot (1872)