Though I’ve been denied one-on-one relationships with my own children for the last five years, I still maintain good relationships with kids as young as five and as old as 23. I can rock an infant calm, play a game with a 6-month old, and challenge a toddler to try something new. Eight days or eighteen years, every child deserves the best I have. Through all this, I see the smiles of my own kids, everyday in every face of every kid who is not mine. I treat them with as much respect as I would (as I did and as I will) my own. A Dad’s love may be denied to his own, but the love of a Dad cannot be quenched. It’s mine to share and the world does know the truth. If only I could tell my kids.
To all Dad’s who see a child and glimpses the future in their eyes–we are a dime a dozen and cast aside as often as a carton with one bad egg–I hope there’s never any shortage.