I have been a father for a long time now.
Long enough to remember carrying a small crib — and everything else — down to the Oceanside in Ocean City while the children walked unburdened beside me, enjoying the beach. Long enough to have issued formal warnings about bare feet on the kitchen floor, nose grease on the sliding window, and the correct way to handle leftover meat. Long enough to have said “I have chores for you. I estimate it will take you no more than 62 seconds” and meant it as an act of love.
It was. It is.
Then one day — Great Scott, where did the time go — I had grandson. Just like that. No article. Just grandson. Some things are too big for grammar.
Being a father means you say things your kids will remember forever, usually things you said in passing, about grout or driveways or the fundamental nature of expansion and contraction. You don’t know which ones will stick. You just keep talking and hope the good ones land.
Apparently, they did.
This site — this whole archive — is something my kid built for me. Every post I ever put out into the void, pulled back in, organized, preserved, and given a permanent home. Every smooth jazz update. Every lawn report. Every philosophical observation made from a chair that is mine, near a floor you will not touch with bare feet.
They kept all of it.
If you ever asked yourself whether anyone reads these Twitters besides you — and I did ask, out loud, on the internet, more than once — the answer turns out to be yes. They were reading. They were keeping score. And somewhere along the way, without making a big deal of it, they built you something that says: we were paying attention.
That’s a pretty good Father’s Day gift.
To anyone out there who is a father, a grandfather, or a man who has ever had to carry significantly more than his fair share to the Oceanside — Happy Father’s Day.
Now. I have chores for you.
I estimate it will take you no more than 62 seconds.
React