Father of the Year: Michael Rosen

Gotta love the Internet and the way one's local ties and virtual ties start to interconnect. Makes me think of spider web spokes connecting the center to the widening circles, and the outermost circle to the absolute center.

Some time ago, I signed up by means of serendipitous clicking for some East Village-oriented email announcement lists, and today received my first message from one of them pointing me to the relatively new blog of community resident Michael Rosen, who yesterday posted a powerful piece called "an Open Letter to the Fathers of my sons". So the spider had walked from beyond the edges of my tangible world out there in cyberspace, back to my very neighborhood.

As the mother of one daughter whose father multi-abandoned her (coming back between long a absences asking the child to once again open her heart to daddy), and another daughter who had a DNA contributor who never made the slightest effort to even meet her (while living only several blocks away)... I have special appreciation for what Michael Rosen and his family have done for seven young men in our neighborhood and for the work he has done/is doing now to write up his story and his insights, as well as to build a Web resource where folks can come for suggestions or to share their own stories.

One photo on Michael's site looked to me like it might be from the penthouse or roof of a building in which I know my younger daughter has visited a penthouse residence of a grade-school friend of hers. Sure enough, Michael mentions the name of his son Morgan, who is indeed Jude's friend... the spider had arrived at the very center of my life's web.

Quote of the Day: Barack on Fatherhood

From the White House Blog:

On the 100th anniversary of Father's Day, the President writes a piece on fatherhood in Parade Magazine talking about his own life and highlighting the responsibilities all fathers must step up to:

In many ways, I came to understand the importance of fatherhood through its absence—both in my life and in the lives of others. I came to understand that the hole a man leaves when he abandons his responsibility to his children is one that no government can fill. We can do everything possible to provide good jobs and good schools and safe streets for our kids, but it will never be enough to fully make up the difference.

That is why we need fathers to step up, to realize that their job does not end at conception; that what makes you a man is not the ability to have a child but the courage to raise one.