Dads

Hello Monday!

I hate Monday. Mondays stink.

Well except for the part where Monday is when How I Met Your Mother is on. I love this show. In a huge way. Honestly I wasn't that into it for a long time, then I started to catch more episodes in reruns. I started to fall a little bit in love, so when I moved to this apartment and got my very own DVR I decided to give it a chance by recording the new episodes.

This has been a rough season to be totally honest. But in the way that I love most; these characters are growing and changing and moving away from some of the things that made them who they were in the first couple of seasons. They are all still fundamentally the same people, but just like in life they are changing. One of the things that I have especially loved about this season is just how much they manage to touch on all my emotions. Pretty much every episode this season has made me tear up a little at some point. One second I am crying from laughing so hard and the next I am crying because I am touched or sad for these amazing characters.

One major theme I have noticed this season has been fathers. Ted's quest to find the right girl so he can become a father; Marshall deciding it was time to start trying to become a father in the midst of losing his own father; Barney searching for his father.

I was a wreck during the funeral episode. I am very close with my own father. A year ago I watched him lose his own dad and had the realization that one day I am going to have to go through that myself.

Tonight I was equally a wreck watching Barney try to connect with his father who had been out of his life for 30 years. I never wanted that for my son and it terrifies me that it could happen. I know his dad is trying now. And I have to give him a little bit of credit, he is doing what he can. But the reality is he chose not to be around for the first year of Wyatt's life. He made the choice not to know his son.

My hope is he never decides that was the better option and disappears. He hasn't seen the worst parts of being a parent yet. He hasn't felt the panic that swells up when you watch the numbers on a thermometer climb. He hasn't stayed up all night with a crabby teething baby. He hasn't had to listen to his kid scream like he's dying while on a time out. It's pretty inevitable that eventually he will experience some of this stuff. You can't spend time with a kid and not see at least a little bit of the less glamorous parts of parenting. I can't help but wonder though if he is going to get a taste of it and wish he had made the choice to just stay away.

I don't want to watch Wyatt go through the hurt and anger I watched a fictional character go through tonight. Cause if it hurt me to watch someone who's not real go through it, I think it might kill me to watch it happen to my son.