Jelani Cobb’s weekend essay, The Old Man, proved a timely and thoughtful read. I was 41 when my twins, Elliott and Emily, were born. I can’t imagine starting the fatherhood journey with twins at 50 as Cobb did, though he’d helped raise a stepdaughter previously. Raising twins has been, and continues to be the most challenging life experience I’ve ever had. One of my closest friends is also gray dad, helping raise two stepdaughters before having two more children (his eldest daughter is around the same age as my twins).

My dad was 26 when I was born, 30 when my younger sister was born. What they may not have given us when it came to material things was more than surpassed by the time, attention, and energy they gave us. Decades later I can trace my loves of reading, museums, music, travel, nature, and cycling to time I spent with my dad doing all of those things. I’ve gotten to revisit some of the same places with my twins that my dad took my sister and I when we were small, including Brookside Gardens and Wheaton Regional Park.

How we parent is inevitably influenced by how we were parented, sometimes for better, sometimes for worse. Whenever I talk with my dad these days, he worries about where he fell short as a dad. But considering that he was raised by his grandparents in Jamaica in the 1950s because his parents were teenagers, it’s remarkable that he didn’t allow his strict upbringing to translate into corporal punishment or strict religiosity in parenting my sister and I. We did not lack for discipline or structure at all though. When I reflect on how I parent, I must concede I’m overly strict with the twins at times. But I also hug my kids a lot more than my dad did us when we were growing up. It was interesting to read about Cobb’s fellow gray dads being more mature, having more insight, and being more patient, because I feel none of those things! Whether it’s my son having special needs or my daughter’s anxiety challenges, I feel over-matched as often as I feel like I know the right course of action to take.

Cobb’s last paragraph about “awkward life talks” brought back both memories of my dad giving me a book instead of a conversation about “the birds and the bees”. It was also a reminder that we gray dads have more life behind us than in front of us and we need to take teh best care of ourselves possible so we can give our best to our children with the time we have.