epilepsy dad

  • To Live Without You

    To Live Without You

    Perhaps that is what it means to be a father — to teach your child to live without you.

    Nicole Krauss, The History of Love

    Sometimes I think that’s exactly right.

    Sometimes I think it’s only half of it.

    The practical side I understand. Teaching him to live without me means teaching him what will hold him up when I’m not there. How to shave. How to read a label at the grocery store, compare prices, figure out what to make with what’s available. How to take his medications, manage a schedule, navigate a system that wasn’t built with him in mind. Life skills, one by one, transferred from my hands to his.

    Some of those I’ve been teaching deliberately. Some of them he’s picked up on his own without me realizing. He learned to trim his nails while I wasn’t paying attention. He manages more than I sometimes give him credit for.

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  • The Thing About Ted Lasso

    The Thing About Ted Lasso

    I’ve written about Ted Lasso before. About curiosity, about being curious not judgmental. That’s the part of him that’s easy to take. The warmth, the belief in people, the way he walks into a room and makes everyone feel like they matter.

    But lately I’ve been thinking about the part that’s harder to see.

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  • From a Pro

    From a Pro

    His mom published a book a few years ago.

    He watched that happen. He saw the process, the finished product, the fact of it existing in the world. And then, the way he does things, he decided he could do it too.

    He came to me with a completed book. “Fortnite Tips for Noobs, From a Pro.” He had the title. He had the byline. He had eleven tips, one per page, written out in his own handwriting, which has never come easily. Physically putting words on a page has always been hard for him. He did it anyway.

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  • The Razor

    The Razor

    For years, we joked about the chin hairs.

    He had a few long ones, and every so often we’d threaten to pluck them and he’d laugh and pull away. Then the patches started coming in. Random pockets of teenage fur expanding like a land mass reaching for each other across the ocean of his face.

    Recently, one of his friends started shaving, and before my son went to Arizona I mentioned we’d get him a razor when he got back. A few weeks ago we got haircuts, so it was the perfect time to bring it up again. He said yes. I ordered one that night.

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  • Getting His Old Man a Win

    Getting His Old Man a Win

    For weeks, the pattern was the same.

    We’d sign up for a Rocket League tournament in the evening, usually the duos, just the two of us. Before we started he’d say some version of “I’m going to get you a tournament win tonight.” Then we’d lose in the first round and he’d be devastated. Not just frustrated the way you get when a game doesn’t go your way. Actually devastated. Because he wasn’t just trying to win. He was trying to give me something.

    He’d already won a tournament with his friend. He knew what it felt like. He wanted me to have that.

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I’m Dave. I write about raising a son with refractory epilepsy.
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