I've been here in Austin at the first Dad 2.0 for two days now, and so far my take-away is how good my husband and I have it. Both our fathers are alive and active in our lives and our daughter's life. My husband is a world-class father and an amazing example of how to bring home the bacon and fry it up in a pan. He has friends who are dads and indeed capable of talking about parenting with him, if he really wants to (I suspect they talk more about work and sports, but these guys are well-rounded awesome men married to powerful, well-rounded women). I don't know how Beloved feels about his support network, but I feel really good about it. My vision of modern fathers is one of an engaged, enlightened generation of guys who come home from work and talk to their kids about their homework or get on the floor with their babies. It's easy to forget it was just a generation or so ago that wasn't necessarily the case as a cultural norm.

What I'm learning from the men here is that they're as WTF about beer commercials as I am. They are tired of being portrayed in the media as inept cavemen incapable of diapering a baby or ignoring a hot twentysomething. 

They're trying to change the way they talk to their sons about being a man. Instead of squishing emotions, they are facing them and writing about them. They're -- along with moms, I believe -- open to recognizing just good parenting rather than good mothering or good fathering. Men and women do bring different elements to the table as we talk to our kids about puberty or heterosexual relationships, but the act of making dinner for your child or reading her a bedtime story or dropping her off at a friend's house -- no different. There's nothing gendered about most of parenting. 

Having these conversations with fathers who are also writers has been really fun for me. Writers tend to be a different breed just in general, more likely to talk about their feelings with total strangers. I'm accustomed to having these breakthrough conversations with women having been a very active member of the BlogHer community for the past six years, but prior to this conference I've only had those conversations with men outside my family and close friend group with two or three male bloggers, one of whom was in Sleep Is for the Weak. It's not lost on me the same guy who was one of the first guys to talk to me frankly, honestly, as a friend, with no weirdness, about parenting, is the same guy who co-founded Dad 2.0.

It's been a great conference, so far, and I'm excited to meet more of these guys today and tonight. I'm here with BlogHer.com editor-in-chief Stacy Morrison, as well as Polly Pagenhart and Shannon Carroll from the BlogHer conference team, and we're having a great experience. Way to go, Doug and John, and especially you, Doug, old friend and dad blogger extraordinaire. 

It's interesting -- David Wescott tweeted at me this:

@dwescott1 #dad2summit, great mombloggers are here, "rooting for" dads. would be the same if dads had a 5yr headstart?

I didn't say anything much on Twitter, but when I ran into David yesterday I said, "Well, look at Congress." And we stared at each other for a second, both sort of dismayed about that. I wasn't blaming him and he wasn't pitying me, we were both just sort of WHY WHY WHY WHY WHY is more than half the population so underrepresented in power positions in America? And WHY WHY WHY are we still acting like a penis disqualifies a man from being able to make a dentist appointment for his son?

I hope women and men as we go forward can look at parenting just as parenting and look at working just as working and recognize that all people bring something valuable to the table based on personality, not on gender. The world is changing, and I want to see it move toward true partnership between men and women instead of one-upsmanship and competition. Who's with me?

The day I read this post about Heather Armstrong's collection, Things I Learned About My Dad (in Therapy), I clicked on the picture of the book cover and ordered myself an advance copy.  I've been reviewing a ton of books over at Surrender, Dorothy: Reviews, but since I sought this one out and didn't receive it from the normal publicity channels, I choose to review it here. 

I thought it interesting that I didn't receive it through the normal publicity channels. Surely a book by a blogger would go through the blogger outreach so many new titles are receiving.  But, like so many of my experiences with Heather, Heather does not come to you -- you come to Heather.  And despite the fact that maybe you have other things to do, maybe you should really do laundry, you can't resist the sucking vortex that is Dooce.  At least I can't. 

I met Heather at BlogHer 2006.  It was my first BlogHer conference, and Heather was on a panel about making a living as a blogger.  I think a few panels before that was the mommyblogging panel, and when Alice or Mir or Tracey or someone pointed out that Heather was in the back of the room, the entire room turned around to gawk at her.  Heather actually bent in half, hiding.  I thought she might crawl under the table. 

She gave a really good talk. Heather is very articulate. At the end of her panel, there was an awkward silence, because we weren't really sure if she was finished talking. She took a deep breath and said, "in the name of Jesus Christ, amen."  And that was when I knew I thought she was pretty great.

Afterward, I went up and shyly introduced myself.  Heather strikes an intimidating pose.  She is 800 feet tall and quite thin, and she dresses in that casually hip way of Bossy that this former-sorority girl finds intimidating.  I am not tall and thin, and thus anything I wear comes off looking "perky." 

I told Heather the name of my blog, and she smiled and said she remembered it because somebody spray-painted "Surrender Dorothy" on an overpass near the Mormon Temple in Washington, DC.

Funny, this blog name to me means tornadoes and chaos and realizing you're not in charge, but to Heather it meant a connection to a former religion.  Funny how titles work.

So anyway, this is a really long intro to say I was very interested to read Heather's book.  Last night, I finished it.  Beloved looked up from SportsCenter around 10:30 and looked surprised.  "You read over half that book tonight," he said.  "Was it a fast read or was it just too good to put down?"

It wasn't a fast read.  It was a slow and dangerous read, a dark and twisty and sentimental read.  A collection of stories invoking all sorts of fathers, goofy fathers, angry fathers, fathers suffering from dementia and conservatism, fathers as overwhelmed as mothers, fathers preparing to divorce mothers, fathers reliving their Star Wars infatuations with their sons.  Earnest fathers.  Scared fathers.  Loving fathers.  Human fathers.  The collection reminds me of the Deadwood bar in Iowa City, a land of dark booths, horrible coffee and upside-down Christmas trees.  Thick and smoke-filled and shot through with cool.  The people who were comfortable there will like this book.  I loved the Deadwood.

Finishing this book made me think of my own father, currently trundling around the western United States with my mother, a notebook computer and an itinerary on a spreadsheet. My farmer father who fell back on mechanical engineering, the man who built a home computer out of a TV that had been hit by lightning. The man who heats his house with an intricate corn-boiling system.  The man who stood in the kitchen eating cookies by the sleeve when my mother got cancer during my tween years, when he wasn't really sure what to do for his two young girls.  The man who stepped up to the plate in the best way he knew how.  The man who my mother thinks I love more than her, but I don't.  I love them different, as you do. 

The other thing I noticed when I finished the book was that I immediately begin composing this post in my head, even though I was too tired to write it down.  Reading good writing makes me want to write, even though I won't do it as well, and there are so many great sentences, poignant themes, beautiful metaphors and moments of irony in these essays that I wanted to write immediately, but my head was too full with thoughts of my father and his father and the grandfather on my mother's side that I never knew.  So I went up to bed and fell asleep and dreamed of my childhood instead.

From the last essay, "Not My Problem," by Bill Farrell, in which he discusses fatherhood with his cat:

"I thought I could stop the clock," I told Kink, "you know, stop time.  Just for a while. but I never could.  The clock just went faster and faster. And like a clock, I got wound up in all of their activities, and before I knew it, they were all gone and I was here with you.  How did that happen?  How could I let that happen?"

"You couldn't stop it if you tried," Kink said.  "As a father, you're the best at what you do when you're at the end of what you do.  You supported, you cheered, you sympathized, you sacrificed, you learned, you laughed and cried, often at the same time, and most of all you prepared your children for this moment at which you are here with me."

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Win yourself some free reading software for 5-9 year-olds and read the review at Surrender, Dorothy: Reviews.