In November, one of my homeys and new friends said to me how she sees that I am “a fight for fathers and parents.”
Over the weekend, I brought my children into a meeting where there were 15 adults. I had hoped that there would be other kids there. I’d made requests about what types of kid-friendly and kid-stimulating activities would be there. When I received no response, I had a good idea that the offerings would be bleak. But, I’d still hoped that some other adults would tow their kids along. They didn’t and Plan A was thwarted. Regardless, I brought a soccer ball and a box of chalk as a few tools for the kids to be outside, be creative and not be stuck with the adults. To not be confined is one way that I’ve been approaching meetings, attendance, participation and consent throughout my adult life. It’s why I gravitate to and espouse the glee of open space technology.
So, Plan B arose based on the spontaneity of what I found before and behind me: a stack of notecards, a blue pen and a black pen, an empty chair next to me, a plate full of rambutans, a plate of pink mochi, and a cooler filled with seltzer. All of this in a small theater with tables arranged in a box for 10 people with six presenters. When the kids joined me an hour later, I was apprehensive about how it would go, and imagined the scenarios that may cause me to get up from the table, to toggle between the kids’ energy and requests outside and the adults’ dynamics and norms inside. If not literally, outdoors, then at least at the periphery while the adults were in the middle.
But, all the toggling that I had to do was from my chair– at times to suggest another fruit or grabbing a can from the cooler, mostly passing notes back and forth with simple, open-ended questions.
Afterwards, multiple people expressed some delight and amazement that the kids had been able to sit through and sit for much of the last 90 minutes of our meeting. Having yellow rice along with a chicken stew, and tofu and eggplant certainly kept us focused and prevented any rough sobbing that may have occurred if the food hadn’t been right there. But, we were all hungry and we ate well. That small detail made quite a difference.
And, I know that how we arrived and how I appeared with impacted others so much so that I am hopeful that more children will be at the next meeting. The kids soak up so much, and there are too many facets of our adult lives that we exclude them from when they want to listen and learn and observe. As I get older and embrace more of this father identity and the ubiquity of parenting, I am also a fight for adults getting to have more fun when in the company of other adults, to be more playful and animated because too many adult spaces or suffocating and boring. I can offer an alternative to these adult norms by bringing the rambunctiousness of youth, because most of us–if not, all of us– want to have more fun even if we are not quite sure how to do so because we are so preoccupied with looking silly or even worse, looking stupid. But, there’s so much fun inside that silliness. And, I’d rather be silly than stuck.
washing dishes: a father’s glimpses 