I Am Not Your Father

Jack was seven, and Jack was not happy.

I crawled under the dining room table where he’d hidden from everyone to take a shot at straightening this mess out. He was staring at the video game in his hands, but I could tell he wasn’t really looking at it.

An hour earlier we’d had our first “you’re not my dad and you can’t tell me what to do!” moment.

This was five or six years ago now, but it reminded me of something that happened much further back.

“Jack,” I said, “I was about the same age as you when my mom got married to someone else.”

We moved from my grandmother’s house in the country, where I’d lived since my parents divorced, to a house in the city so that my mother and I could live with her new husband.

He was very different from my father and I struggled with having someone new in my life telling me what to do.

At some point my mother insisted that I call my stepfather something other than his name, so I wound up calling him dad.

I even started calling my dad by his name, Wayne.

One day about that time I was at my dad’s house riding my bike around his neighborhood. I spotted him at Rodney’s house, a neighbor just down the street.

“Hey Wayne,” I said as I rode up, “can I have a dollar for the store, I want to get a coke.”

“Boy!” Rodney’s voice thundered.

I jumped back.

“Don’t you ever call him Wayne again, not at my house. He’s your daddy and that’s what you’ll call him.”

That struck a chord, and from that day I never called my dad by his name again. I was partly scared of Rodney, but I was mostly ashamed.

Nobody should be able to replace your dad.

Turns out, that was Jack’s fear.

I didn’t know what to expect crawling under the table with him that night, I just knew I was mad.

I wanted to lead with, “You will listen to me LIKE IT OR NOT YOUNG MAN.”

I’m glad I didn’t.

It wasn’t so much that Jack didn’t want to listen, in fact it wasn’t that at all.

He thought I was trying to replace his father.

So I told him what had happened, what I’d done to my dad, and how I’d promised myself that if I ever had stepchildren I would honor and support the relationships with their biological parents above all else.

“I promise you Jack that I will never, ever try to take the place of your father.”

I can’t say he was exactly happy, after all he was in trouble for something to begin with. But I did see the slightest bit of relief come over his face.

That was the first time I had a “you’re not my dad” conflict with Jack.

And it was also the last.