Crap, leave me alone for a minute.

There's little in this life that can make you feel as badly about yourself as when your child needs you and you're not there. Why is it so easy to let the little things obscure your vision? I was busy doing something or other tonight, wearing headphones, and my wife interrupted me yet again. I was ready to vent my irritation when she told me that our son had been crying; he was afraid that bees were going to hurt him, that he had bees in his hair. He was stung by a bee this past summer and since has developed a mild phobia.

What really stuck in my craw was that I was angry at having been interrupted doing my big, important things. I've found it so easy to unthinkingly build walls around myself. It's not even ego, they're emotional calluses. I've stopped caring about things good and bad over the years, for whatever reason. Ruts have formed, scar tissue appeared and disappeared, and I forget what I looked like once upon a time.

It's very easy to know in an academic sense how important your relationship is with your children, another thing entirely to steward them responsibly, to peel your layers for them. Applying reasonable standards every minute of every day is a herculean trick; what's fair, what works, which boundaries to guard, how much autonomy is healthy. I've always had the romantic notion that when I decided to have children, I would not necessarily be superdad, but I would be the guy that gave them every kiss and hug and scrap of attention that I never got and wanted so desperately. I'm finding that wishing won't make it so, but it can be done. I can make life for my children a garden of love and acceptance, and maybe find a little corner in it for myself too.

This doesn't solve the question of why I still put my needs first. My son took the question out of my hands, fortunately. I took him to the bathroom and then tucked him in, and he said "Daddy like to lay with Gavin", which is his 3-year-old's way of asking if I would cuddle with him. I lay down next to him and was adjusting his blanket when he grabbed my hand in both of his and hugged it to his chest. Such a simple thing to need for safety and comfort: your daddy's hand. I'm glad I was there to give it.