Perhaps that is what it means to be a father — to teach your child to live without you.
Nicole Krauss, The History of Love
Sometimes I think that’s exactly right.
Sometimes I think it’s only half of it.
The practical side I understand. Teaching him to live without me means teaching him what will hold him up when I’m not there. How to shave. How to read a label at the grocery store, compare prices, figure out what to make with what’s available. How to take his medications, manage a schedule, navigate a system that wasn’t built with him in mind. Life skills, one by one, transferred from my hands to his.
Some of those I’ve been teaching deliberately. Some of them he’s picked up on his own without me realizing. He learned to trim his nails while I wasn’t paying attention. He manages more than I sometimes give him credit for.
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