Being a dad is like a daily exam covering a textbook you never read

There are no shortages of songs articulating the complexities of father and child relationships. Bob Dylan offered “Forever Young” as an ode to his son, a healthy heaping of well wishes and pleasantries. Harry Chapin’s “Cats in the Cradle” gives warning of the vicious cycles that sometimes occur between generations. One of the more sensitive songs to portray fatherhood is John Lennon’s “Beautiful Boy.” This song expresses the weight of being a dad, the worrisome nature that comes with it, and the overwhelming sense of hopefulness a parent has for their child.

While these songs bring about emotion and retrospect with their catchy melodies, experiencing fatherhood in real time is an entirely different tune. You rarely hear about the toothpaste-stained bathroom sink. Nobody references the early weekend wake-up calls or stirring to a sleepwalking child by your bedside in the dead of night. There is no mention of randomly finding your freezer door open on a Tuesday afternoon because someone helped themself.

There is no warning about the constant bombardments of “can I have a snack?” Free, peaceful, and alone time becomes the holy grail for dads, causing them to search them out earnestly and persistently like Indiana Jones. Nobody gives alert of the unconscionable amount of inside out clothes thrown on the floor. The spills, drops, slams, screams, stomps, eyerolls, and hands-on-hips are all kept quiet from soon to be dads, like an inside joke between seasoned parents. These epiphanies keep dads trekking through fatherhood with nothing less than a sense of adventure.

Nothing quite prepares someone to be a dad. No job or career translates into the skills needed to successfully complete the obstacle course of fatherhood. No prerequisite is sufficient to give a glimpse of what is in store. This fact is on purpose, leading to the stance of “there’s no turning back” once you have arrived at that juncture, and the hospital’s firm no-return policy.

Singer Brandi Carlile meticulously and accurately describes what happens when someone becomes a parent in her song, “The Mother.” She explores the highs and lows in her song while providing comfort in the fact all parents are fumbling through their journey. Carlile sings, “The first things that she took from me were selfishness and sleep. She broke a thousand heirlooms I was never meant to keep. She filled my life with color, cancelled plans and trashed my car, but none of that is ever who we are.”

Fatherhood is often glamorized as a no-contact sport where dads recapture purpose through their children. It is sold as a noble endeavor, to rear upstanding offspring that will bring about positivity and affirmation. Being a dad is not a practice round, it is a daily exam covering an unwritten textbook. Sometimes you pass, other days you fail, but most importantly you show up for the test.

In the same way funny, complicated narratives of fatherhood are left unsaid, the same applies to heartwarming accounts. Dads do not openly talk about the sentimental stories that imprint them. They hold on to the private admiration given to them from their child like fuel needed to keep traveling. They carry with them the observation of their son mimicking their actions, grounded in the fact the son wants to be exactly like their hero.

In the adventure that fathers experience, an appreciation of how they have had to change springs forward. The selfish person dimly fades, and priorities slowly rearrange. The true sense of fatherhood cannot be conveyed in a funny story or analogy, it is a culmination of vivid emotions. The heaviness of responsibility brought about by being a dad creates the sincerest agent of change most men will ever encounter. Whether fathers tell of the laughable or memorable stories in their trove, the irrefutable piece of their narrative is that they are a different person because of their children. This truth is both beautiful and profound.

Jim Jackson works in the bourbon industry and resides in Frankfort with his family.