Adopting Fatherhood

Cross country skiing is somewhat of family tradition. It all started when our neighbors convinced my Grandmother (Ema the Great) that it was a fun way to exercise. We started borrowing skis from them, gliding through the pasture and woods behind their house. We had been doing this for a few years when Ema the Great went out with us one day and came around a corner. Corners at the bottom of a hill are tough if you don't hit the trails often, and she certainly didn't get out as often as us kids did. She was going down a slight decline and couldn't steer away from a small sapling. Eventually, and I use that word purposefully because she was going so slow, she hugged the tree, thus ending her cross country skiing career. I, however, had been bitten by the skiing bug. I helped teach my two of my cousins when they were just old enough to put on skis. When I had time, and in the days when metro Detroit used would get a decent amount of snow each winter, I would be on the trail...

Add caption A few weeks ago, The Kid implored me to listen to girl music. "What's girl music?" I asked. "It's music that has girls singing, Papa," she stated with a hint of disbelief that I didn't intuitively know that. So we started scanning FM stations, eventually finding girl music. The next day, I put on a playlist of Jill Scott, Erykah Badu, Corinne Bailey Rae, and Aaliyah to avoid frustration when we couldn't find appropriate music over terrestrial radio. I realized through this exchange that she is starting to figure out who she is in this world, and what makes her different from other people. I reflected on our conversation last month about why I have white skin and she has brown skin (hint, we are all made a little differently). I thought about my tendency to take her to sporting events that feature men, Detroit Tigers baseball, Detroit Red Wings hockey, and Oakland University Golden Grizzlies Men's basketball. Talking abou...