A Different Father's Day

The day is different when you're living in an "empty nest."

By: Mitch Allen
Date: 06/05/2008 Updated from June, 2005


As far back as anyone in my family can remember, I always wanted to be a dad. When friends, neighbors and teachers would ask the inevitable question, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” all the other kids would give standard answers, like a fireman or an astronaut, a doctor or a football player. I would always answer, “I want to be a dad.”

I’m not sure why I gave that answer. Yes, I think my father is the greatest man who ever lived, but lots of people feel that way about their dads. Growing up, he always seemed so gentle in a world that wasn’t. He felt comfortable around any kind of person or in any situation. He effortlessly spouted words of wisdom that always made me think, always reassured.

And now that he’s battling kidney cancer—his words are growing wiser.

Someone once told me that the most important thing a father can do for his children is to love their mother. Dad did that, and as far as I can tell he’s still doing it. That has been perhaps his greatest lesson. Never, ever give up on love. No, he didn’t use those words, but he always loved my mother through situations, not because of them or in spite of them. I had a sense growing up that he felt indebted to her, a debt he could repay only with his own lifetime.

As a kid, and even as a young father, I could not imagine what gift my mother had given him that was worthy of so much adoration and commitment. But now, as an older father who is also a new empty-nester, I am beginning to understand.

This Father’s Day, June 15, 2008, will be different. My oldest daughter now lives in Boston, and on that Sunday I will be in the car with my youngest daughter, driving her to Los Angeles for a summer internship.
We all know the truth. She might decide to move there.

I’ve been telling my wife for years that these kids are done. “Once a child reaches age three her personality is set in stone,” I would tell her. “And by age ten, personal values are already established. There’s nothing you can do at that point but love them.” She would argue that they will never be done and I had better not give up.

Of course, she’s right.

In fact, she’s been right about most things since the day I met her—throughout my nervous twenties when life was driven by a need for approval from everyone in the world but her, and throughout my ambitious thirties when I so wanted to “be somebody” that I forgot to be myself. Even today, as I pour my heart into publishing this magazine, she just smiles and asks, “What time will you be home tonight?”

That’s the debt. That’s the debt my father owes my mother, and the debt I owe my wife. She knows me better than anyone in the world—far better than I know myself—yet she still loves me and still helps me find my socks. She forgives my preoccupation with work, which I shamelessly call “trying to make a difference.” She forgives my habitual tardiness, my eternal messiness, my thoughtless forgetfulness, my total lack of ability to listen, and even my own denial that I almost always completely miss the point—not to mention my gift for surprising her with exactly the right words that can hurt her most.

It’s no wonder she grows teary-eyed whenever she thinks about the kids leaving home forever.

She’ll be alone with me.

So far, being a father has been everything I hoped it would be when I chose that profession over a fireman or an astronaut. And although I sometimes complain that I’m nothing but an ATM with legs, it’s been the only job I’ve ever had that has resulted in a perfect product—my daughters.

But today I know that I had little to do with it. It takes a good mother to make a great father, and I’m looking forward to being alone with the mother of my children in this “empty nest.”

When young people tell me they don’t know what they want to be when they grow up, I tell them to relax. I’m in my forties and I still don’t know. Although now that I think about it, perhaps I do know what I want to be when I grow up.

I want to be a grandfather.

Mitch can be reached at Mitch@mimivanderhaven.com.

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