The conversation was too late.  My father called to give me his advice against divorcing my wife, who had recently bore our first child.  But, the decision had already been made in my mind and heart.  For a very brief moment I thought, you did the same thing and now you want to warn me.  The pain I felt from being a son would not allow me to receive warning of the pain I would feel as a father.

There are many things that I wished I known as a child.  I often wondered what I could have done better, or different, to maintain a relationship with my father.  There were times when I daydreamed about how my life would have been different with my father’s daily involvement.  My mind grappled with how my biological father felt about another man having daily access and influence over my development, even…