Father’s Day
By Heather House
The first time my friend Glenn (Theresa’s husband) met my father, he found a quiet moment to lean close to me and say, “You’re doing really well.”
On a good day, I think people find my father eccentric. On a bad day…destructive. So in trying to describe my relationship with my father, we’ll use the social media descriptor, “It’s complicated.”
But this piece is not about my father. It is about the father of my children, Will Wise, who I knew was going to be my boyfriend the first time I heard his name. I’d just learned I’d been hired as a staff teacher for an outdoor camp in New England called Nature’s Classroom and the owner was telling me about my new boss.
“Will Wise heads up our site at Beckett,” the owner said. “And I think he’s some kind of vegetarian.”
A vegetarian. I just knew.
The first time Will and I met in person, my vision momentarily blurred and a surge of electricity flowed between us. He smiled, straight white teeth peeking out from under a burly mustache and beard.
“Hello.”
“Hi.”
Will always said he knew in that moment that his life was about to change. And I knew I had just met “The One.”
In the months and years to come, we’d break up and get back together a half dozen times and we’d frequently retell the story of this moment in time, to ourselves and our friends, as proof that our relationship was worth fighting for. But when I look back on our 20 years together, it wasn’t that initial spark between us that held us together. It was our will to be as earnest and honest in our pursuit of authenticity and whole-being, both as individuals and within our couple-hood, that kept us going. We worked through our flaws, our expectations and our failings to meet those expectations. For me, the critical breakthrough was when I realized it wasn’t enough to love Will because he was everything my father wasn’t. I had to love Will, all of Will, for who Will was and wasn’t.
When describing our relationship, Will liked to say that I was the accelerator and he was the brakes. (I’m the kind of person who tries to assemble Ikea furniture without reading the directions, whereas Will never attempted anything without first conducting thorough research.) So you can imagine the dynamic when, at 36 years old, I announced it was time to have children.
Between the loud ticking of my biological clock and the terrifying truth that having children makes absolutely no sense on paper, tensions were high. And as complicated as my daddy-issues are, Will came to our relationship with his own daddy baggage, having never known his biological father. His adoptive father was a great dad, but Will had no father figure in his life until he was ten. He worried about what kind of father he would be.
I had absolutely zero qualms about the kind of parent Will would be. I knew that the calm loving presence he brought to our relationship would be exactly what our kids would need to thrive. And I was right. From the moment he set eyes on our first born, Cypress, Will embodied everything a father should be. Loving, generous, compassionate, fair and dependable. And when the twins came along and we only slept in 90 minute increments for months on end, Will was our rock, trudging off to work in the mornings and folding endless piles of cloth diapers in the evenings. We endured a lot in those early years, but Will was an unquestionably good father.
Will died from stomach cancer in November of 2021, just a few days after Cypress turned ten. (The timing is a lot to unpack.) Maybe there are some people who celebrate Father’s Day joyfully, without having to sift through a pile of complicated feelings to find the nuggets of happiness, but I’m not one of them.
Losing a husband was hard and sad. Losing the parenting partner who was supposed to bring cool balance to my fiery heat was a gut-punch. But knowing what my kids are missing is the hardest. I wish they could feel his cozy hugs, experience how he listened without judgment, benefit from his patient teachings and measured wisdom, and know the relief of forgiveness and understanding he offered freely. Perhaps most selfishly of all, I wish they could see how we engaged as a couple, so he could model for them what it means to be a good man, a loving father and a devoted husband.
If you want to give a universal nod to the good men on this great earth who know how to do fatherhood right, join us in celebrating Will by having a cookies-and-cream milkshake (Will’s favorite) on Sunday. Ben and Jerry’s has a nice non-dairy version ☺.
Before accepting the job that brought her to Penns Valley in 2003, Heather House called the number on a flyer advertising TriYoga to grill the teacher about the practice and teachings to be sure she would have access to “good yoga.” And while the job didn’t turn out as she’d hoped, the yoga and, more importantly, the teacher (Theresa), far exceeded her expectations.