The Good Men Project

Guest blog by Scott Mosenson

June 17, 1981
I was 17. One of my friends parents asked me if I had given any thought to what I wanted to do with my life or what I wanted to be. I dont know why I answered the way I did. I was only seventeen.

I said, I know my primary job in life is going to be being a good husband and father. I dont know what my vocation is going be yet. I got time to figure that out.

Where would a thought like that come from in a teenager?

So becoming a husband and father wasnt something thrust upon me by a wife with a ticking clock or anything. It was what Id been ready for since Ronnie Greenbergs father asked.

March 19, 2002
Cmon, baby. Push, honey. This is what we want. This is good. Every contraction means the babys getting closer.

I thought, Wow, I am doing great. I am a great husband. I was really listening to Garmuk during prenatal classes. Im doing everything right. I am like a copilot on the space shuttle.

My wife turned to me with a sternness that could be described only as Marine-like and said tensely, I love you. Do not speak another word until this is overnot another word.

I nodded. My first screw-up. All those years of readiness, and I didnt even make it to 10 centimeters fully effaced.

February 27, 2005
Maybe my best singular parenting moment happened just after our second daughter was born. My parents were in town for the birth and were staying at our house. Courtesy of the spectacular Screen Actors Guild insurance, my wife was able to stay in the hospital for a few days.

I came back home the day after the baby was born and took a nap with our oldest daughter, who was almost 3. We napped for about two hours. When we woke up, I said, Ill be back in a second. Im gonna go to the bathroom.

The master bath was just two steps away from my side of the bed. I went in, sat down, and closed the door. About 30 seconds later there was that wonderful tiny tapping that kids knuckles make so low on the door. The door was right near the toilet, so I opened it. My daughter was standing in her diaper and pointing to the bed. She said, Daddy, look what happened. I made pee-pee in the bed.

Now, when I got up she had on a diaper, and the bed was not wet. She must have pulled her diaper aside and peed all over the bed.

I said, Huh, how do you think that happened?

She looked at me and said, I think it happened because Im still a baby.

Hmmm, are you worried that because theres a new baby that you wont be a baby anymore?

She looked at her feet and said, Yeah, I think.

Hey, do you know what Poppy said to me this morning? (Poppy is what we call my father.) First thing this morning, do you know the first words out of Poppys mouth were when he saw me? Good morning, my baby. You see, no matter how old you get, youll always be our baby.

She stared at me for a couple seconds while she processed what just happened, and then suddenly she threw her arms around my neck and squeezed and said, I love you, Dad.

May, 2006
My wife was driving one of our daughters somewhere when they passed a spot where the police had a whole gang of guys handcuffed and up against a wall. Our daughter asked, What are they doing, Mommy?

My wife answered, The police are arresting those guys.

Why?

Well, they probably did something badbroke the law or hurt someone. But thats what the police are for, to protect us.

Our daughter looked at my wifes eyes in the rear-view mirror and said, Oh, I dont have to worry about that. My daddy would beat up or kill anyone who tried to hurt us.

Then she turned her head to look out the window and, according to my wife, a smile of confident peace came across our little girls face.

My wife called me a few minutes later to tell me the story. She was crying as she said, You have given our daughter, at the age of 5, a sense of safety and security inside that I still dont have in my life.

December 10, 2009
As a 45-year-old father of three daughters, I squarely land on and subscribe to the definition of parenting as the divine burdenbecause it is so divine, and it is such a burden.

I was so ready to be the father of a son or sons: the sports, the tools, the fishing, the ethics, the never quitting; the teaching how to avoid a fist fight at all costs, but when it cant be avoided, how to thoroughly beat ass. I was ready to teach my son or sons all the great things my father taught me, and even more.

One of my daughters, I could see, desperately wanted me to be as excited about her shoes as she was, and I thought I did a pretty good job of faking it. But in every How do I look? and Do you like my dress? loomed a bigger issue for me: How do I ignore the pressure girls put on themselves to look pretty?

I said all the stuff that felt right, like You would be beautiful to me in a paper bag, but that is a very pretty dress, and You know, sweetheart, beauty is how you are and how you behave and the choices you make, but that is a really pretty top.

I tried to shift the focus to the action and the inside from the appearance and the outside.

But then this grown woman I know told me that, because of concerns similar to mine, her father never told her she was pretty. And so she spent all kinds of energy as a teen trying to get boys to give her what her father had not.

Oh my God! Was I completely screwing this up? Was I pushing my daughter to be the town hump because I didnt want her to be superficial?

Today
I dont think I’m even close to being as good as I’d like to be, which is where Judaism helps a lot: Its all about the trying. I heard from a fairly scholarly Jewish friend that God does not want perfection; he wants striving.

I know Im striving. At the end of the day, hopefully, I’ve strung together enough good-parenting moments that when one of our kids is screaming at me about how Ive ruined her life because I wont let her go to some inappropriate party, Ill be able to sleep that night, trusting that eventually she, too, will remember some of those moments.

And, hopefully, my daughter wont be the town hump.

*****

Scott Mosenson is a Chicago native who has been living in Los Angeles for the last 19 years. He is one of the founders of the highly-acclaimed Open Fist Theatre Company in Hollywood. Scott is married with three daughters and loves every minute of it. This essay is a version of the one he read during a Good Men Project panel discussion at Temple Israel of Hollywood in early December. The discussion focused on what Judaism says it means to be a good man.