Well, how did I get here?

(same as it ever was)

I didn't want to be a dad.

In truth, I didn't not want to be a dad either.

The possibility of fatherhood never really crossed my mind growing up and, frankly, before my then-girlfriend-now-wife asked me about it one sticky Florida afternoon in a Holiday Inn parking lot eleven years ago, I suspect I’d only thought about the question for perhaps a cumulative fifteen minutes.

My gut reaction was “nah”.

This did not go over as well as I expected.

Of course, I had no particular reason to say “nah” other than, at first cut, being a parent seemed like a lot of work.

I was twenty-three, in the Army, and deeply attached to the idea that my limited free time should involve less effort than my day job.

But based on the immediately tearful reaction, the question was clearly a very important one for her (rightly so!). She’d thought about it at length, definitely wanted kids, and my thoughtlessly forceful “nah” caught her completely off guard.

I paused.

Even back then, I was aware that my confident bluntness sometimes had a tendency to blow things up I did not intend to blow up.

Reflecting on my options while I sweated profusely into the cloth seat of my Nissan Versa, I decided I very much did not want to lose the one thing working out for me in my life at the time (the Army was not going that well). So I quickly backpedaled.

My “nah” became a “I need to think about it more because I’ve never really considered that possibility as a potential branch of my life”

I didn’t have the language for it then, but today I might say I confronted a nuanced truth about myself.

And thus began my dadicalization.