“Colm crying” as parental validation: a muddled brain gropes for reassurance

On this page, I write my last confession. Read it well when I at last am sleeping…

I write this post not as a cry for help — despite any appearances to the contrary, I’m OK! — really! — but as a reflection on the convoluted nature of the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves to comfort ourselves.

Being a parent is sufficiently complex that, just as there is no single right way to perform acts of parenting, there is also no single right way to feel about being a parent. This seems obvious to the point of being completely uninteresting — and yet I regularly feel guilty that certain parent-child moments that are supposed to melt my heart don’t especially do so. “Why are you so cold and unfeeling?” I ask myself, half-joking but half-serious.

And then I think of Colm Wilkinson singing his Jean Valjean stepfather songs in Les Miserables, and I tear up, and I feel better about myself.

If I consistently cry upon hearing these paternal songs — which, to be clear, I do — some significant part of me MUST be the doting, devoted father that I want to be. Right?