Dad of the year

I knew at that moment that a child could not be luckier than ours to have a father like you.

Fatherhood was a foreign word to me, a concept i could not quite grasp. For me father was a term used for the man that showed up once every three months to take you to the grocery store. At eight years old, the joy and excitement of walking into a no frills and spending sixty dollars so you would have food for a week and wouldn't have to spend the month sharing a pack of ramen with your sister while your mother sat silently at the table with nothing in front of her but a small smile as she provided for her children as best she could.

Being a father was a yearly visit to his side of the family to parade his two innocent children around in hopes to win some brownie points from his own mother and siblings. It was being forced see the vast differences in your upbringings and feeling as though you were the lowly poor children whom they had to give a little bit of money two when they saw you; how else would you survive. It was creating a rift between cousins, because how can you relate to your so called family when they had pantries that were always stocked and you lived in a home where you weren't even sure your mother could make rent.

A father figure in my eyes was a man that i yearned for, someone to love me and want to spend time with me. To tell me that i would do great things in this world, instead i got a man who beat my mother, wasn't in my life and when i tried to build a relationship was always met with words on how i am turning out just like my mother and how i am a disappointment.

I watched as my sister gave birth to three beautiful children whose father was only around a to spend her money on his gambling addiction before disappearing with a word. A man who let his children cry wondering why 'daddy' wouldn't pick up their phone calls.

Than there was you. We had a rocky start, on and off. I found out i was pregnant the last time we broke up and we agreed that was the last time. But you deserved to know so we talked. You wanted to try one last time. Hesitant i tried to convince you we didn't need to be together, we could co-parent without the relationship. I mean i didn't have a dad and i turned out great, right?

You insisted and we moved back in together, started planning tis life for the little bean that was growing inside of me. Months passed and as my belly got bigger our relationship got stronger. We suddenly started communicating in a way that foreign to me, you would talk about our life with such grandeur and before we knew it, Our beautiful baby boy was here.

You sat in the hospital with me for two day with no food because you refused to miss his birth, you held my hand through the pain and when he was out you gladly cut his umbilical cord. The nurse placed him in your arms and i seen a look on your face that i had never seen before. Not from you and not from my own father. There was a pure unadulterated love radiating from you to our son. An unspoken promised between the two of you. It's been a year since that day and when you think it is just the two of you i catch a glimpse of that look.

A year of you making sacrifices i didn't think you had in you to make, to prioritizing our baby, to waking up and changing dirty diapers just as much as i do and to showing your son what unconditional love really is. You are an amazing father not for the grand gestures or the expensive gifts but for the little things. You are a great day for the hours you spend trying to teach him the alphabet. You are a great dad for never missing a chance to take him to the park and spend quality time with him. You are a great dad for always seizing the moment and capturing his growth whenever you can.

It is all the little things you do that are a constant reminder that the best thing a dad can do is be there and I knew at that moment in the hospital that a child could not be luckier than ours to have a father like you.