Dylan Stafford

For Father’s Day 2025, I am publishing Daddy Muscles Too. This is an excerpt. Comments welcome.

Originally written January 10, 2009

I took Jack to the park this morning, before I went to work. We were looking for squirrels. When he sees one he looks up at me and grunts.

Can I go get it? His eyes ask.

Yes, I nod and he bounds away with his bouncy little boy run: left-right, left-right, bouncy-bouncy.

He’s 21-months old.

His trip starts straight, but he’ll stop for a flower or a fallen branch. The squirrel is long gone by the time Jack arrives. He circles the area where he saw the squirrel; if he were a dog, he’d be sniffing. I catch up and we look up into the tree together and point. I’m never sure he sees what I’m pointing at, and I wonder if he feels the same way.

At Marisa’s suggestion, I’d taken Jack for a walk. Today was a Saturday, and I had a couple of morning hours with Jack before I went to the office.

I was distracted as my thoughts kept drifting forward to work, but the squirrels made me pay attention. People feed these squirrels and it makes them bold and unafraid to come close. I didn’t want Jack to get bitten.

Fast forward.

Now, it is almost 10:00 p.m.

Today was SuperSaturday #20, our big, quarterly UCLA interview day. With two staff, three college clerks, and 63 volunteers, we conducted 265 in-person admission interviews of future Fully Employed MBA (FEMBA) graduate students. We had prepared all week, but still I worried the whole day, sweating the details.

Would a “good dad” worry so much? Wouldn’t a good dad not get so worried? I am tired tonight as I write this. My teeth are brushed. Jack’s been asleep for three hours and hasn’t woken up yet. He’s been waking up two-to-three-times-a-night for the last several weeks; we don’t know why.

We are exhausted.

What’s it like for Jack, looking for squirrels? He sees squirrels and birds and busses, but he looks for the squirrels most. He chases them. He never catches them. And he is fine with that.

How I can be more like Jack?

How can I worry less? How can I bounce along and chase the squirrels in my life, whether I catch them or not, just for the joy of chasing?

Thank you for this super (tiring) Saturday.

Love you Jack.

Sleep well, little buddy.

Hope you catch a dream squirrel.