Father’s Day advice for all dads: Protect, cherish and enjoy your children

As I age (Franklin Roosevelt was still president when I was born), I seem to look back at events in my life ever more frequently than I did when I was younger.

One of those significant events happened 40 years ago this month, when our daughter was brought into this world. My wife (of almost 49 years) and I had been childless for nearly nine years, so our daughter’s arrival was something long awaited and extra special.

Special for us, because we had a healthy baby girl who fulfilled our marriage and our life. (I believe having a baby is a more profound change to one’s life even than getting married and finally moving in together).

Special also because we were fortunate to raise a bright, loving child. She was also a very fortunate child, which I’ll get into shortly. I will not provide her name so that she may have privacy in her life.

After our daughter graduated from high school she attended a small college in Pennsylvania, not too far from Philadelphia. After two years of college, at age 20, she became a registered nurse and two years later she received her bachelor’s degree in nursing. After college, she remained in Pennsylvania and subsequently married a good, solid young man.

Several years after college, she became a neo-natal ICU nurse; obtained a master’s degree in nursing and qualified as a nurse practitioner. She now works full time as a neo-natal intensive care unit nurse at a major university hospital in Philadelphia, while also teaching part time at another major Pennsylvania University.

We love her and are so very proud of her and all that she has accomplished and we miss not being closer to her.

Our daughter definitely has good genes, but my wife and I can’t take credit for that, because she is our adopted daughter. Being adopted is another reason she is fortunate — I don’t say she’s fortunate because we raised her, but because above all else, her birth mother chose to give her life.

Our daughter was also fortunate because the adoption agency (Holy Family Services Adoption Agency of Catholic Charities of Los Angeles) placed her in the temporary care of a foster mother who had been fostering infants for them for 11 years. This loving woman gave her an excellent start in life. Our daughter was the 67th foster child her foster mother had taken care of in those 11 years. That’s right — 67 infants in 11 years. I often wondered if she ever had a full night’s sleep in all those years.

Residents of Philadelphia are also fortunate because they have a dedicated nurse helping save the lives of some of the most misfortunate inner-city children. Those babies are receiving the best of care from our daughter and other dedicated professionals like her. There is no way to place a value on that.

So, as we think about Father’s Day this year, my wife and I thank God for our daughter, and for the two women we’ve never met; the one who gave our daughter life in the first place, and the one who gave her an excellent start in life as her foster mother.

Happy Father’s Day.

Love, teach, protect, cherish and enjoy your children. We only have them for a short period of time and then we must release them to be on their own.

Joseph Rouleau is a retired supervisory special agent with the U.S. Treasury Department and a retired U.S. Naval Reserve captain.

This story was originally published June 20, 2021 at 12:00 AM.