New Generation, New Kind of Daddy

My son leaned over his plate at the dinner table and softly said, "Could you please move the bread?"

"I'm sorry?" I said.

Andy pointed to the basket of rolls perched on the far corner of the table. "Could you move that, please?"

I looked at him, still confused. He smiled, a bit self-consciously, it seemed.
"I can't see him," he explained. "The basket is blocking my view."

"O-o-o-oh," we all said at once, having gotten a collective clue. Andy was referring to Clayton, his 5-month-old son, who was gurgling and wriggling in the baby seat on the kitchen floor.

Andy and his young family were home for a weekend visit, and by the time we sat down for dinner, we all had turned silly. Our food grew cold as we stared at the baby, raising our eyebrows in unison and returning his every coo. All of us but Andy, that is. He was in the farthest seat, and the breadbasket was in exactly the wrong spot for him to get a peek at his little boy.

"Here, you can hand the bread to me," Andy said.

My husband and I exchanged grins as I picked up the basket and handed it across the table. Andy straightened in his seat, raised his own eyebrows and beamed.

"There you are," he said.

At the sound of his father's voice, Clayton pumped his legs wildly, his eyes wide. He sure knows his daddy.

You know the old joke: Man plans, God laughs. I look at my son and can almost hear the chuckles thundering overhead.

For most of his life, Andy insisted he never would have children. He wasn't all that sure he would marry, either. No offense, he always said, but it didn't exactly work out for you and Dad.

He used to date deadly serious young women, the kind who wear only black even in summer and never help clean up after dinner.

"Hey, whatever makes you happy makes me happy," I always said, but I was hard-pressed to see exactly how life could be jolly with women who always seemed on the verge of piling stones in their pockets and walking out to sea.

Then came Stina, whose enthusiasm for life was so infectious my son practically skipped down the aisle. Less than a year later, little Clayton was born.

Chuckle away, dear Lord.

I had expected Andy and Stina to share the duties of parenthood. They are partners in everything. Both work for a university, and they are fortunate to be able to juggle their lives so that, right now, one of them is always with the baby. They make many sacrifices, both in money and time together, but I am not surprised to see this.

What I didn't expect to see was my son, the father.

I grew up around men who left the day-to-day parenting to women and didn't really like being around kids until they could actually "do something."

In college, I was surrounded by guys who swore they were going to spend more time with their kids. That whole Harry Chapin "Cat's in the Cradle" thing. Good intentions, but then we found out we could use cell phones, BlackBerries and laptops to work all day, every day, even at the soccer field and on the beach. Who knew, right?

My son and his generation of fathers increasingly seem to be waving a thanks-but-no-thanks to our baby boomer ways. The first time I spent an afternoon alone with my son and his baby, my initial commitment to save the day turned into feelings of superfluousness. He knows a dirty-diaper cry from a feed-me cry and how Clayton likes his blanket tucked just so. He talks to his son as if Clayton were a fellow traveler, not an infant, especially when he thinks I'm not listening.

It's been a week since little Clayton visited our home, but the baby seat -- a gift from our neighbors -- still sits in the same spot on the kitchen floor.

It's a reminder of our grandson, of course, and how he can lighten the worst of moods.

But it also calls to mind a father who never can get enough of the baby in the room.

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Connie Schultz is a Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist for The Plain Dealer in Cleveland and the author of two books from Random House: "Life Happens" and "… and His Lovely Wife."