It was a tentative conversation at first, the way it can be when two involved dads get together because you never quite know who you are talking to when you are talking to a father. Maybe he is a sensitive, involved father. Maybe he is one of those guys who don’t get it, who don’t understand that fatherhood is a life change, not a chore that eats into going out time or hanging with the guys time.

I could tell he was wondering which one I was, though I had a pretty good feeling which one he was.

“Two must be so hard,” he empathized with me. “I barely slept the first several months and we only had one.”

“Oh, I barely have any memory of that first year,” I explained. “I was so exhausted. I can remember sitting at work, so tired that I couldn’t concentrate, couldn’t get anything done. It is the one thing that really scares me about having another baby – I don’t want to go through that again, you know?”

We talked about buying our first houses and how that affected our experiences as dads and how we each had something about the first house that didn’t allow us to feel at home and how that changed with our second homes. But standing in the backyard of our friend’s house, among the swing sets, him pushing his little boy, me watching my Okapis move from one swing to another, the conversation kept coming back to what it was like being a father.

“I think it is a life change,” he told me, warming up to me, realizing we were on the same fatherhood team.

“I completely agree.”

“I have friends, guys who are fathers but still go out all the time. They don’t understand. If you have any free time, it should be spent with your kid. It is exhausting, but it is what is important.”

“I, actually, have the opposite problem,” I tried to explain. “I have not taken enough time for myself to have fun, to go out. I’m just trying to do that once a month or so.”

“That seems reasonable. We all need some time,” he acknowledged. “I work from 6am to 2pm and when I get home, maybe I run a few errands or maybe get a jog in before I pick him up from daycare.”

“But then you guys get some really good time together before your wife comes home, right?”

“Exactly. I go to sleep only a little bit after he does, but we get a lot of time together in the afternoon.”

“That’s really great,” I told him. “You’re both lucky to have that time together.”

“I know. It’s the time together that matters, that’s what those guys don’t understand.”

“It’s true. It’s true.”

And he continued to push his little boy on the swing and I continued to watch my Okapis playing.

I don’t meet enough guys like this one, but I really enjoyed talking with him, sharing our ideas, our beliefs, our passions for being good dads, for being what our children need us to be.

The only bad part for me was that he lives in another state, a couple of hours away. Bummer.