Ode to Joe
A Tribute to the Papa Behind the Mama

I’ll be honest. My maternal resume—be it printed on parchment or platinum—lacks that certain…glow. Domesticities elude me, scrapbooking scares me and parks, even the ones with wine nights, plague me. So I look to my husband Joe—our sons’ father—to fill in a lot of parenting blanks in our house.

Specifically, when it comes to visits to the ER.

Our sons Jackson and Benji have run a full gamut of urgent health issues from the grossly serious to the seriously gross. But as I write this and reflect back on my rearview mirror of each son wrapped in bloody towels en route to CHOC, my passenger seat is always, curiously, empty.

“You’re just better at those things.” Joe explains.

Ok, well how about attending birthday parties? Surely he would enjoy at least one cupcake-filled Saturday from 11-1, 1:30-3:30 and then again for a 4-6er. Or a scorching Sunday, perhaps, for an all-day fete at Disneyland. Nothing like hob-nobbing with other dads mastering the art of poking juice boxes with rubber straws! But, no. It is I by the coolers…It is I.

“You’re just better at those things.” Joe explains. Again.

So what exactly does Joe contribute to our house other than food, water and shelter? I mean, come on—it’s Father’s Day. ‘Tis the season to celebrate all that our husband’s are, not what they’re not, right?

Right. So allow me tell you a little diddy about a man named Joe.

When I found out I was pregnant with our first child, Joe planted a sunflower. Within weeks, several more sprouted, until, by my seventh month, we had a small field of gloriously abundant stalks that would have brought Van Gogh to his knees. But by month eight, my pregnancy became complicated, dangerous and, curiously, the flowers began to wilt. So one morning around 5 a.m. I found Joe in the garden, sweating from tilling, watering, and fussing over the flowers. “What are you doing out here so early?” I asked him.

“Helping them live.” He said quietly. And Joe tended to those flowers—painstakingly resurrecting them—every morning and every night, until the day he held our healthy son Jackson in his arms.

When I became pregnant with our second child, Joe planted tomatoes. He chose an unlikely patch of dirt with no shade, I remember. But as my pregnancy endured, Joe’s tomatoes sprawled out onto the concrete, multiplying by the hour. And then I suffered the same complications as with my first, but much earlier this time. The tomatoes immediately began to shrivel, flatten and rot with the news. The seeping red proved too close to a metaphor to the potential fate of our second son, so Joe cleaned up the patch every morning and every night until he found one little rascal who endured the harshness of Mother Nature. It was a tiny, greenish tomato, which he tended to until the day he held our healthy son Benji (also tiny and greenish) in his arms.

To see a father so committed to his children before knowing them can stop a bus—hurricane—a heart. We, as mothers, are hailed as vessels of miracles—the madonnas, if you will—of our kids’ souls. Our sleepless nights, our tireless intuition, our exhaustive love…we inspire songs, paintings, even peace. So it’s the fathers who are the unsung heroes of today’s society, in my opinion. Sure, they’re hairier, sweatier and perhaps bulgier (in all the wrong places) than the more traditional heroes…but I challenge all of you this Father’s Day to look under the masks of your men and ask yourselves, “Is this man worth the breakfast in bed the kids and I are about to serve him…again?”

And that answer is, “Yes. Here’s your #@&! breakfast.”

The thing is, ladies, we chose them. And if our kids were put to the test, they’d all probably choose their dads, too. Without us.

So this year, whether I’m holding one of my sons down in a half nelson to keep him still for a butterfly stitch, or up so high so that the other can nail the blessed piñata for once, I know that Joe is right. I am better at these things. Because he is best left in the garden to nurture our familial soil, our roots...

...and to keep helping us live.

Happy Father’s Day, OC dads. (Especially you, Shoog.)