There are fathers, and then there are fathers.

The former can be anyone from Joe Smith, the car wash attendant and heavy metal musician from Crescent City who likes to stay up all night, eats his Cheerios from a mixing bowl, and makes a point to keep his real address a secret so that the Del Norte County District Attorney’s Office can’t find him and force him to make good on child support; to some unassuming, oily basement dweller who has had sex exactly once and made a baby, who fears what fatherhood means for him and his online gaming habit so refuses phone calls from his one-time lover and lays awake at night fearing that somehow, someway, his mother might find out and get really pissed.

Or there are possessive, aggressive men who are willing to take initial responsibility, but believe that in so doing they become the master of chattel rather than a member of a family. They brutalize with words — and sometimes with fists — because they fear that if given a choice, their family would rightfully vacate their jail cells and seek more congenial relationships elsewhere.

Let’s be frank: There are no heroics involved in ejaculation. No skills to master, no tests to take. Anyone can eventually lure a partner into their bed, and given enough friction, deploy their genetic delivery systems.

The role doesn’t automatically confer honor, or dignity. It doesn’t even require affection between the potential parents, although some future fathers are more than willing when the time comes to pour forth declarations, drop the L-bomb, and promise a lifetime of future good behavior if it speeds up the delivery process. 

These so-called deadbeat or abusive dads are the clear failures, men who seize up the second they know they’re responsible for someone else’s wellbeing and refuse to evolve. They start selfish and end selfish.

Luckily, these are the minority.

Most fathers are neither perfect nor awful, but somewhere in that vast and unsettling continuum that exists in between. Struggling with the pressures of career and family, personal aspirations, and an ever-changing relationship with the mother, among endless other factors, they operate like engineers in the belly of a flagging submarine — dashing here and there to open this valve and close that one, blow off steam and give the massive wrench three clockwise turns to the left, wiping the stained gauges with a spade thumb to determine whether the vessel will ultimately do its job or nose dive into the dank, blinding mud of the ocean floor.

In other words, they’re trying.

Upon waking to the news that we were fathers, none of us received an instruction manual or Idiot’s Guide to making good people. Rather, we concocted a system based loosely on our own childhoods, on sitcom families that seem basically sound, on how we see most of our peers perform given similar conditions, and — most importantly — on what our wives and partners expect.

If they’re anything like me, they improve over time. What once seemed an impossible burden over years becomes manageable, even joyful, given maturity and the patience that seems to always come with a decade or three. 

Over the past 17 years, I’ve been nearly every manner of Dad, yet never the kind who didn’t care. Even in my worst moments, when every thought that entered my head started and ended with me, I’d lash myself in the quiet moments for being less of a father than I knew how to be.

My current approach? The maker of memories. 

Every childhood is a collection of memories, both good and bad, that eventually add up to define one’s youth. You can’t help the occasional bad memory, no matter how hard you plan or obsess over things, so to tip the scale toward the good we’ve made a conscious effort now to create joyful episodes — at the beach, camping, at home over a board game, wherever — to thwart any lingering shadows. 

When our 50-year-old child thinks back to life in the crowded Stem-Faulk home, we hope above all that they remember how hard we laughed, and played.

So, to my mind, here’s how to best honor Father’s Day: If he’s terrible, get away from him; if he’s violent, call the police; if he’s napping, take off your shoes; if he’s happy, let him be.

If he’s grumpy, commiserate; if he’s hungry, try steak; if he’s loving, love him back; if he’s not, love him anyway. 

Realize above all that he’s human, and his mistakes already take up vast real estate in his overwrought boiler of a brain. He wishes he could take back the occasional slammed door and raised voice, the nights out or bills unpaid, but he can’t. So he’s learned to judge his relative success by his children and the rich unfolding of their various lives. 

This pride keeps him floating no matter how deep the dive.

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James Faulk is a writer living in Eureka. He can be reached at faulk.james@yahoo.com.