Early Friday morning was just one of those “Well he’s just gonna have to keep crying”-kind of mornings. It just was.

My 5am attitude was born of the brand of stubbornness that comes from a combination of the accumulated anger of five consecutive days of insufficient interrupted sleep, and the false pride that accompanies late nights borne of primarily poor choices.

But as my (almost) 9-month old son whined and screamed for 15 minutes, and his mother left the room to prep for her pre-dawn side job, my resolve dug in to refrain from picking him up. And as 15 minutes of his forced wailing became 30 minutes, and 30 minutes became 45 minutes, my fingertips just dug deeper and deeper into my ear canals to block the sound.

Mature, I know. “Father-of-the-Year” material, for certain.

But sometimes when you know the kid’s not hungry, when you know he ain’t sick, and when you know he’s dawg tired, you just have no energy or patience to deal with his foul mood, because you can barely deal with your own.

So before she left the apartment, my wife came in and grabbed the sobbing child, delivering him to his grandmother in the other room who was visiting for the week to help us out.

The half hour or so that she held him was just the break I needed to take a deep breath and grow up a bit. And after holding him myself for a good spell, I gave him back to my mother-in-law so I could shower.

And with the radio tuned to NPR, I actually wasn’t particularly interested or moved at first by this two-minute Father’s Day “Listener’s Perspective” that was playing. At least that was the case until the last paragraph kicked in while I was pulling the shower curtain to dry off and step out.

“Being a dad taught me how fleeting life is. What could seem interminable when it was happening, for example flying cross-country with three boys under the age of five, has in retrospect come and gone in a flash. My boys are now men. Hopefully more pleasures await me: I want to dance at their weddings; I want to hold their babies in my arms. I look forward to these blessings but they in turn will go from experience to memory in an instant.”

Yeah, it was during those lines that I really started paying attention. And when the speaker finished with the line — “But in the end one thing will remain true: I was their father and I was always thankful for that.” — I had to sit down on the edge of the tub as I instantly and unexpectedly burst into tears.

Now it could’ve been the frayed nerves from my son’s 45-minute screaming session that set me over the edge. Who could know for sure. But either way, I can relate to the author and say without pause that I’m so, so thankful to have my son in my life.

Emotionally thankful to have received this gift of fatherhood from him. This precious gift which I don’t know how many years, months, days I’ll be blessed to enjoy. So I’m doing my best to enjoy every minute I’ve got with it.

Even if some 5am mornings, it’s temporarily tough to remember that goal. ;)

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