The playground dads
I became a dad at 35. A little on the old side, but that's okay.
While I probably have less energy and more back pain than a 25-year-old, all those childless years made me all the more grateful to experience fatherhood. Your inward-looking existence suddenly turns outward, focusing on the future growing right in front of your eyes.
Surviving on five hours of sleep is somehow tolerable. Poop doesn't bother you. Spending two hours at a playground daily becomes totally normal.
At our favorite neighborhood parks in Washington, DC, you're just as likely to hear kids scream "Daddy" as you are "Mommy." It's a beautiful thing that dads of our era spend more time than ever with their children, although not as much as moms. Still, there is a discernible shift underway, and it's evident at playtime.
I call them The Playground Dads, and proudly count myself among them.
We're present rain, shine, wind, snowstorm, heatwave, heat dome, arctic shield, galactic shower, super early, midmorning and pre-dinner. Playground dads are a mixed bunch of elder Millennials and Gen Xers, ranging from corporate types who arrive still in office wear to workmen clad in paint-smeared khakis.
On the weekends we show up in similar uniforms: hats (hide tousled thinning hair), gym shorts or joggers (comfy), t-shirt or quarter-zip (also comfy), lugging a scooter and slurping from a giant thermal mug full of the good stuff.
There’s a camaraderie among the dads. We know we’re not superheroes, but we’re insanely proud of our families and the active part we play in our kids' lives. We idly chat about professional developments, but mostly share what our five-year-olds like to eat and the shows we’re watching on Netflix and HBO Max. Everyone has five streaming subscriptions, minimum. The Sopranos and Severance are in heavy rotation.
We encourage our kids to take risks. Fly down that slide headfirst and see what happens. Can you scale the 10-foot spiderweb made of ropes? See if you can get up the rock wall today. Chase that kid. But stop hitting.
In the toddler stage, families are liable to beat the sun to the park. Schoolkids, in my experience, like to roll in at the ripe hour of, say, eight or nine. These are the moments that most parents would much prefer to lazily welcome the day in their jammies at home. But you quickly learn it’s smarter to let kids rev their engines in the mulch.
At the park, loose-knit pods of playground dads monitor the kids without being overbearing, which is probably attributable to a mix of low risk analysis and pure fatigue. Again, we are aged.
"Old" dads aren't unique in urban centers where professionals congregate. After a lifetime spent building up educational bona fides, for better or worse we tend to find jobs in big cities and, after even more time, get married and start families.
Gray hair is the norm at school drop-offs for our kindergartners. Parents come in business suits (office day) or running shorts (WFH day) — there is no in between, because our glamorous days are past.
The Playground Dad origin story goes like this.
By the time babies arrived, we'd eaten at the Michelin-starred restaurants and traveled the globe, and then suddenly the world shrinks down to the size of a crib. Your days are governed by naps. You have a one-mile walkable radius that includes two favorite restaurants, maybe a beer garden, and a few nice parks.
Parents compare notes on the good parks. High-dollar private schools open their gates to the hoi polloi on weekends, charitably granting us access to their extravagant buildouts that include boulder walls and tree-to-tree ziplines.
We dads hang out nearby, ready to jump in as needed, but that's rare. We're mostly there because we want to be. We know this time is precious.
Young kids want their parents around, no substitutes. They adore you until a certain age, at which point they see your flaws, after which they eventually come around to adoring you again. But by that time they've often left the nest. It's the way of things, and it means spending time with kids while they're kids is our top priority.
I want my sons to look forward to family time. I make a point of saying things like, “I love hanging out with you” and "You are so much fun to be with."
While I never want to be a hovering or suffocating presence, it's important to me that my boys feel they have a safe, sturdy foundation from which they can launch out and explore the world.
I remember watching author Toni Morrison talk about this on Oprah in 2000, a full nineteen years before my sons would arrive. But something she said stuck with me.
Morrison says as parents, we too often show care for our children by seeing if their "hair was combed or their socks were up." But the child experiences this as judgment. What they're looking for, instead, is delight.
"When a kid walks in the room, your child or anyone else's child, does your face light up? That's what they're looking for," Morrison tells the group.
Her wisdom involves two steps: seeing your child and delighting in them.
That's why you'll always find me and the other dads on the playground. We have enough silver up top to know how much this matters, and how much it means for us to celebrate a feat on the monkey bars the same as we would a Super Bowl win.
When our faces light up, something ignites inside of them and burns forever.
One day my boys will discover the timeless joy of seeing their own children play their hearts out, and you can bet The Playground Granddads will show up to cheer them on.