I walk into the master bedroom of my grandparents’ condo in Delray Beach, Florida with my seven-year-old daughter. My grandparents are there, sittin

The Unique Pros and Cons of Being An Older Dad

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2021-10-27 04:30:04

I walk into the master bedroom of my grandparents’ condo in Delray Beach, Florida with my seven-year-old daughter. My grandparents are there, sitting up in their queen poster bed.

My grandpa calls her over to “give us a hug, doll-face!” (Forgive the anachronisms; it’s him talking, not me.) He tells me how happy they are to finally get to meet my daughter. Then he scowls at me.

I should probably explain: My grandparents died of old age 14 and 20 years ago, and this is a recurring dream I’ve been having. Not that I don’t believe my dead grandparents would defy science to get in one final stab of Jewish guilt. But I suspect this dream more likely represents my own remorse about being an older dad.

You see, I waited until age 46 to reproduce. (My wife was 36.) We couldn’t have physically waited any longer. Due to the low quality of her eggs and the low motility of my little guys, our IVF doctor said there was only a 20 percent chance that the single embryo he created would even implant, much less ever attend college. (The two other embryos died.) The human body has an organic baby-making deadline, and my wife and I chose not to listen to it.

There are benefits to being an older dad. Probably the greatest for me is that having a young kid makes you feel young. If my daughter wasn’t around for me to chase her around the apartment or the courtyard, I would just sit on the couch and accumulate arterial plaque. And because she insists that we never fast-forward over the musical guests on Saturday Night Live, so she can have a dance break, I recognized the names of at least a quarter of last year’s Grammy Awards nominees.