Absent fathers often don’t know what they’re missing

Somewhere at a happy hour in Boston tonight, two men will be sitting at a bar having a conversation like this:

First Guy: So, do you have kids?

Second Guy: I ttthink so. I'm pretty sure I heard my girlfriend was pregnant before I left Seattle.

First Guy: Boy or girl?

Second Guy: Dunno.

OK, I admit it. That little snippet is my own icy editorial. But it provides a doorway into my greater astonishment: How did we succeed, culturally speaking, in near surgically separating so many men from the archetype of fathering? And without them even knowing it, let alone knowing what it would cost them?

As legend has it, my birth-father was packing to leave my mother even as she was in labor with me. My surname is an adopted name -- do I look Greek? -- grafted into my life at the age of 3 by way of my mother's new husband who raised me as his own.

In my 19th year, my older sister, for reasons of her own, embarked on a mission to find our birth-father. And find him she did. In Tennessee. In the fall of 1975, I opened my college dorm room door to find them both standing there. I have my mother's eyes, but, sheesh, there in flesh and blood was my jaw line, my hair, my spine, my butt ... my laugh, for heaven's sake.

We had 25 years together. We became good friends. Watching him grandparent my sons moved me.

Once, on a drive to Tucson, Ariz., I asked him about the day he received a letter from a lawyer's office asking for his signature so that my dad could adopt me. "Freeze the picture with your pen poised over the document," I said to him. "What are you thinking in that moment?"

"I thought your mother had married well," he said, without hesitation or irony.

I was neither offended nor angry. Rather, incredulous. Oh my god. This world has actually convinced you that fathering is about providing. And, if a successful Arizona chiropractor is providing for your children, then all is well and settled. For everyone.

My point is not a moral scolding of men who relinquish, in part or in whole, a present relationship with their children. I won't delineate the price those children pay, as if that wasn't obvious. No, my astonishment is not understanding how an absent father doesn't see the cost to himself. Deciding not to be a present father is a grave injury to one's own soul. You would think mercenary, spiritual self-interest would be reason enough to stay connected to your children, no matter the sacrifice.

If today I was to meet the most beautiful woman I'd ever seen -- keen intellect, classy, great sense of humor, not a Minnesota Vikings fan, never drinks white zinfandel, crazed for my bod, childless, never-married, perfect for me ... and also, by the way, worth billions of dollars including a Learjet with a pilot on 24-hour call -- and God appeared to me and said, "Steven, this is thy Soul Mate ... but thou must live with her on a yacht in Mission Bay, San Diego ... Yet, fear not, because thou mayest fly to Las Vegas to see thy kids or likewise jet-hop thy progeny to California at a moment's notice whenever thou feelest like it ..."

... I'd say "no." Since it was God, probably "no, thank you."

See, when I'm lying in hospice, there are any number of unlovely things about me I can live with. Die with. In peace. But when a girl breaks your boy's heart, cell phones don't suffice. Reading about the game-winning shot in a text message doesn't begin to get it done. Videotapes of elementary school spelling bees are not the same as being there.

I'm fine with being a quite imperfect father. But not an absent one.

If my boys are willing to trust me with friends and wonder and bullies and tears and peer pressure and failure and celebration and puberty and Playboy, then my response simply can't be, "Why don't I fly in this weekend and we'll talk about it."

My children don't need a dad who visits. They need to know me. And to do that they need to see me drop casseroles and curse and forget lunch money and scratch myself and belch and be grouchy ... and laugh and tease and teach and admire and tousle their hair.

I can't have their defining memory of me having an airport as its backdrop.

Steven Kalas is a behavioral health consultant and counselor at Clear View Counseling Wellness Center in Las Vegas and the author of "Human Matters: Wise and Witty Counsel on Relationships, Parenting, Grief and Doing the Right Thing" (Stephens Press). His columns appear on Sundays. Contact him at skalas@ reviewjournal.com.