Dads are important…

Certainly, as an adult who has adult friends who did not have relationships with their dad, I know in hind sight dads are important. And as my dad is and always has been involved in my life, I see his strong influence.

Last night I was out with some of my FRG friends. Most of the women in our FRG fall into two categories. They are either of child bearing age or are moms of young single soldiers. I have some weird blood disease so Josh and I don’t have children right now. I am the only one without kids who regularly goes.

Sure, I check out babies because they’re cute. But I spend more time these days checking out 2 to 8 year olds. A couple of the kids came with last night. Women who are contemplating divorce and removing fathers from their children’s lives should talk to a military wife who has kids. A military wife will set them straight on what dad brings to the household.

In our FRG, the babies seem to be various deployment and leave conceptions. They are either born right before a deployment, or nine months after mom last saw dad, or nine months after dad gets home. And we also know when dad was deployed before then because that’s how old their siblings are. (When someone says, “This is my Bosnia baby,” they are *not* indicating the adoption of a child from Bosnia… it means the child was conceived either before dad left, during a pass to Europe, or shortly after dad got home.)

There’s this two year old starting to learn about daddy coming home. At FRG, we had M&M cookies. So, like a lot of two year olds, he removed the M&Ms that were on top of the cookie and ate them one-by-one, commenting on whether or not Daddy likes M&Ms (he was assured by his mom that, indeed, Daddy likes M&Ms), if Daddy would share M&Ms with him (his mom was sure that, yes, Daddy would love to eat M&Ms with him) and what his favorite color M&M is. Last night, we also learned that cell phones are very important to the two year old. Cell phones have pictures of Daddy on them. He doesn’t distinguish between his mom’s cell phone and the cell phone of others yet, though. Yes, looking at a picture of Daddy is so important to this two year old that he assumes that all cell phones *must* have pictures of Daddy on them.

Then there’s a five year old girl. She’s desperate for people “like her” that have daddies in Iraq. Since they are of shortage at her school, she brought all her little trinkets to dinner last night for us to oooo and aaah over. She has this bear that has removable BDUs (she proceeded to explain that they are not ACUs, and that they are jungle BDUs and not desert BDUs… one of those “you know Dad is a service member if…” moments). On the back of the bear’s BDU top, inside, there is a small pocket where she keeps a picture of her and her daddy. And she had a little box of various little things from Iraq.

These kids are testimonies on a couple of things. One, their moms are good moms who are obviously keeping things together and are making Daddy an active presence in their family lives. Two, they are a testimony on how kids need their dads. These dads are coming home soon but in some ways, they never left. Women in my generation should treat their children’s dads better.*

*I am well aware that there are also bad fathers out there. But, it’s so easy for women to screw over men in court these days, that my guess is it is the rare and heavily publicized exception, and not the rule.