A Birthday Reflection
What it means to be a father in the Holy Land
It was about this time of the night six years ago that Alex came into this world and the power of the moment is always physically present when I sit in that memory for a bit. I am sitting here and thinking about fatherhood tonight and what that has meant for me over the years and some of the struggles and obstacles that I’ve faced and have tried to overcome in order to even be a father. I am writing this little reflection to parents and those fathers who might have had or are in similar experiences.
Alex was and continues to be a surprise and a blessing. His mother and I weren’t but for a few months before she got pregnant. I remember when she called me up on my birthday in 2011 and told me she was pregnant. A flurry of all of the emotions came over me and I ended the phone call saying that I would try to be the best father I could be. I remember it was late, probably like 2 or 3 am when I finished the call. I immediately called my older brother up and told him to get up that I needed to talk to him. I told the conversation that I had, and my brother Chad simply said, “You will never regret being a father.” I knew that if the first things that came out of my brother’s mouth when he was still asleep in bed were, “You will never regret being a father”, I knew that things were going to be ok.
But I also knew that being a father was going to mean being physically present in my son’s life. That I wasn’t going to be the parent that I needed to be from Gladwin, Michigan. That I was going to have to pick up shop and move to this end of the world. While I had been coming here every year since 2005 and my work here was a big part of my life, it was never in my plans to move here. In order to try to be a father here, I gave up everything. I was traveling here when my dad was dying of cancer. I had to sell the newspaper. I had lost my house. I had to leave my widowed mother behind. I had to let go of my culture and try to step into an entirely different place. And as years have passed, my relationships with my old friends back home have changed and in many cases, have just passed on.
I have said all of that, to say this: Sometimes there is a fear that the sacrifices we make won’t pay dividends in the end. That’s legit. That happens in life and it isn’t unique to the experience of being a parent. All of us face decisions and we have to decide if it’s worth it. But what I can say is this, is that every day when I am with my son I never once second guess if I made the right decision to pack up shop and move here.
I am lucky in a lot of ways with my son, because of the amount of alone time that we spend together. It’s something that I decided a long time ago to intentionally do. When it comes to time with my son, I am really selfish about it. I think part of that intention was out of fear because of the work that I do here for social justice puts me at risk of not being able to be with my son, and I had a feeling that I need to try to make every second with my son worthwhile, because I never felt like I was secure here under Israeli law. But as time passed, I realized just how powerful a relationship can be built between a father and their child when you actually spend real time with them. Which can be difficult. Work can be a distraction. Friends can be a distraction. Relationships can be a distraction. To be frank, just the weight of life here, the layers of violence and oppression that comes with it, and the lack of power over the situation can create cycles of depression — which too can become a distraction. And learning how to cut out distractions takes a long time to do. I am still a long ways from being fully present all the time when I am with my son. But when I focus on cutting those distractions out of my life so there is an open space to bring my full attention to my son, there is a type of love, solidarity, and meaning that emerges, that at least for myself, I haven’t experienced before.
And judging the relationship you share with your child can be difficult. I have, at times, been wrongly jealous of the relationship that Alex shares with his mom. I too can get caught up in immature frames of thought and be wondering if Alex loves his mom more than me, even though I know full well those thoughts are irrelevant. Because my son is only 6 and he’s trying to sort out and communicate with multiple languages in his head, he can’t all the time find the right words to explain what he’s feeling or why he’s feeling that way. There are a lot of adults I know that still aren’t can’t talk about the experiences they have the feelings that come from them. But the fact that my son at times will share his feelings in what little capacity he has meant something to me. It means something to me because sharing ideas is one thing, but sharing feelings is a completely different level altogether. Alex will say he was scared or sad or happy or whatever and we can talk about that, as what could be reasonably expected from a 6-year-old. And I do the same with him about my day, as far as they are appropriate things for a little guy to hear. And the result that is a little friendship. Because there are parents who do well in teaching their children about life, but in the end, don’t have strong relationships with their children. Over and over and over again I see it. From my friends and how they describe the relationship with their parents, to my friends who are parents and how they describe the relationship they have with their children. This isn’t something new or profound in the annals of life, this was the way that my mother approached her relationship with me. I have the type of relationship with my mother that I can talk about the whole array of my feelings and experiences with her without hesitation. I couldn’t do that as much with my dad, particularly when I was younger. But as my dad got older, and I mellowed out a lot, we started to have that kind of relationship as well.
And having a relationship where we can talk about life here is paramount. My son lives a unique life compared to a lot of his counterparts. As a little Israeli Jewish kid, he spends a lot of his time with his Palestinian counterparts. ‘And as he gets older, he too will have to face the systems of oppression to maintain his own integrity, a system which tells him to fear others, that violence is legitimate and deserving, and the whole litany mechanisms and apparatuses that set him up to gain power and privilege as being a white Jewish boy in this society. Even now, he’s starting to gain an understanding of the disparity of life between Jewish Israeli communities and those of Palestinians. And seeing that disparity, that oppression is hard on people.
So what I am saying is this, is that if you sacrifice your life to not only be a parent but to build a healthy relationship with your child, whatever you think you may be giving up will be returned in an immeasurable amount of life. This has been my experience.
