Father Knows Best
Fatherhood. It came up again last night almost effortlessly. And why not, considering I was carefully balancing twin kindergartners, Rozaline and Arlene, at the time? It was their own father, Ramon, who picked the questions out of the blue. Had I thought of marriage? Had I thought of children, of being a father myself? No doubt, I looked the part - though I dare say it was an easy role to play flanked by such adorable costars.
The answer, of course, is that, yes, I have thought about both marriage and children, but that I am still a long ways off from either. And in that answer were the obvious missing ingredients: job, home, prospects, girl. But just behind those was another more recent revelation, one that I only came to after working with children of all ages this year in Beit Sahour. Because none of my students are technically mine, it's fair to say that they have no claim on me - and surely not as they have on their parents. But there's also a sense in which, because I don't belong to any of them, I get to belong to all of them. For that, fatherhood can wait.