We came in our T-shirts, cargo shorts, socks, and running shoes. It didn’t matter that we were a little potbellied. We were mavericks. Fun lovers. Risk takers. Until we lost our kids.
Take the dad standing near the field, his chest resting over his paunch, looking intently into the distance. He wasn’t a helicopter parent. He let his kids play freely in the schoolyard—right up until the moment he realized he couldn’t see them anymore.
That mild panic hit me when I “lost” my daughter in the crowd of Rawlinson families on the field during Fun Fair. We were together when I got distracted, opening my journal near the back doors of the school to scratch down a thought.
I put my head into my journal only for a couple of minutes, writing what I saw. I saw a man who wore hand-stitched pants with blue, red, and white patterned blocks, paired with a surrealist T-shirt featuring large light blue shapes over a dizzying pattern of red, pink, and black boxes. He knew he had broken the frumpy father mold.
When I lifted my head from my notebook. She was gone.
I started walking around looking for her, in the lower school yard. She was nowhere to be seen. I see other dads looking around intently too. Anxious mavericks in baseball hats, filled with immediate regret.
I looked for her in the school field but only saw a sea of kids close to her age. Then just as I started to think I really lost her, I ran into my brother-in-law. He said my daughter was over by the bouncy castle with her cousin.
Whew! Back to normality. More dads in T-shirts, shorts, and running shoes gathered around us. We turn our conversation to work, economics, and politics.
But my posture had changed. I stood a little taller, permanently studying the distance. A sentinel in a baseball cap, cargo shorts, and espadrilles, keeping a sharp eye out for my free-range kid on this dad’s day out.
Because no matter how frumpy we are, we are here.
