“I Do” By Timothy Kenny. A fellow Tweeter. A heart wrenching read. Thank you for sharing this piece of your life with us.

I hope you all enjoy this story as much as I did.

It’s easy to be a father. It’s much tougher to be a dad.

I have a father. He’s out there somewhere — still alive, presumably. He left my mom, brothers, and me earlier than my memory allows.

The first couple years after the divorce, my father came dangerously close to ‘dad’ status.

He had visitation rights every Sunday, which he held to fairly regularly. He’d take us to the zoo or the park. Sometimes we’d just stay at his house and do art projects or play in the yard. He even coached my Little League team one season.

He was damn near religious with his Sunday obligations.

Until one week he wasn’t. Who remembers why? Could have been a wedding. Maybe he got called into work. These things just pop up sometimes, you know?

I do.

Soon, every week became every other week, then once a month, and finally not at all.

I can’t imagine how my mom must have felt, watching her three boys sitting on the stoop, excitedly awaiting a man she knew wouldn’t show.

I can’t imagine how she managed to keep it together, holding down three jobs at one point while simultaneously holding down the fort.

I can’t imagine the feeling of pure exhaustion, coming home after her full-time job, making dinner, taking us to our numerous sports practices and games at three different fields, then sending us off to bed and going straight back out to her part-time overnight job.

She must have been depressed, tired beyond belief, at the brink of desperation and hopelessness.

Those were the good old days.

My mom met Jim through a mutual friend. A stocky man, a heavy smoker with a known wild side, he was all wrong for her. Naturally, they were married a few months later.

The honeymoon didn’t last long. Starting in the first few months, some nights he didn’t come home from work. How I enjoyed those nights.

My mom would put on a brave face for us, but at twelve, ten, and nine, we were old enough to realize what was happening. Looking back, I should have felt guilty for finding joy in her misery.

I don’t.

Because the nights he did come home? Those were much more miserable.

My brothers and I would hide in our rooms on those nights. The hollow luan doors and thin carpet padding did little to buffer the incessant profanities ricocheting below our feet.

But the yelling I could handle. You crank up the alt-rock station or The Real World loud enough, the rest becomes white noise.

If Jim came home right after work, I knew it would be a yelling night. Those were the Real World nights. The point of no return was dinnertime. If he wasn’t home when the boiled hot dogs reached the table, I’d pray to any god who would listen that he didn’t come home at all.

Because if we heard the truck door slam after the sun had set, we knew it meant he’d been drinking. On those nights, no amount of Green Day at full blast could drown out the sound of open hand on cheek. At least when he didn’t come home at all, it meant he was on another cocaine binge, slapping around some other woman. I don’t know why that made it any better, but well…

It did.

It did, because those were the nights I didn’t have to feel like chicken shit.

Those were the nights I didn’t have to hear my mom cry and not do a damn thing about it.

Those were the nights I didn’t bury my head under my pillow to muffle the clatter of shattering glasses instead of stepping in and trying to put a stop to the madness.

Those were the nights I didn’t feel that perfect cocktail of depression and rage, the one that made me think this would be the night I finally manned up and killed the bastard.

I thought that. I fantasized about getting a gun and shooting him right between those fucking beady little eyes. I doubt I really would have done it, but a tiny part of me still wonders. It shames me now, but I thought that.

I did.

My mom’s marriage may have dissolved after a few years, but my anger and depression sure as hell didn’t. It continued through the remainder of high school and all through college. For years I battled myself, a secret war hidden out of humiliation. All the sadness, the anger, the shame, tucked away as punishment for all I didn’t do to help out my family a decade before.

The summer I graduated college, I met a woman. We became friends, and after a few months, more than friends. Four years later, I stood at the altar, waiting to marry her.

That’s the moment it hit me. That’s when I realized none of the problems of my childhood were my fault. That moment when I looked into my soon-to-be wife’s blue eyes and spoke.

I do.

Do you vow to cherish?

I do.

To love?

I do.

To honor?

I do.

Redemption. I wasn’t my father. I certainly wasn’t my stepfather. I was my own man.

A man who would stand by his family when things got tough.

A man who would never degrade his wife, but treat her as an equal.

A man who would never beat his wife, but solve his problems through mutual respect.

A man who took his vows seriously.

A man who would bring children into this world and love them no matter what.

Ten years later, I am that man, the husband and dad my father and stepfather never came close to being.

“Daddy, do you want to play with me?”

“I do.”