Forget the dictionary, whatever version you believe in. (Anyway, sometimes dictionaries are like supposedly holy books. Somebody, somewhere defined an objective reality from his/her decidedly subjective viewpoint, then other people used up a whole lot of time, money and grave space subjecting other people to it.)

So nah. My definition of father (to which I will not attempt to subject you) does not come from a dictionary; nor is it (at least consciously) related to On Becoming a Woman, which I read when I was about nine years old. Hey, I was reading everything with around me that had letters on it. And that one had pictures too. Hmmm ...

Nor is my concept of fatherhood, stemming from my definition of father, based on some pointers from a manual - if one exists. I never checked. Never felt I had to.

Looking back, I can say now that it is founded in large part on the examples I saw around me, starting with my own father and then extending to the other families they socialised with and our relatives, which tended to be the stereotypical nuclear unit. Put it this way, when I was in about grade five at Lyssons All-Age School in St Thomas, a couple of pals were talking about someone else's brother as in same father, different mother.

I said they are half-brothers, not brothers, and they looked at me like I was dumb. I was, because I was applying the definition of 'brother' from the detective and adventure stories I'd read, quite a few of those from a culture which could not understand how Bob Marley could have more than one child born in the same year.

See what I mean about books and definitions?

Support, encouragement and comfort

Anyway, by observation and without even thinking about it in a structured way, I came to define father as presence. Not presence as in imposing, intimidatory and even outright cruelty, but simply being there with support, encouragement, comfort and instruction for the child or children who are the result of your little wiggly sperm ending up in fertile circumstances (which are, hopefully, good grounds for a lasting relationship as well). Being there through all the stages of their lives, from birth until, hopefully, your death.

Of course, that presence also means having the good sense and graciousness to get out of the way when required.

So, I guarded my little wigglies jealously, not so much because of AIDS, which was around and just evolving into a global mega threat in the early the 1990s.

This was long before I became a father, from that plus sign came up on the little square thing they dunked in a brown paper bag and slipped to you at the pharmacy like it was something that the police could put a street value on. I was a father from I stood in those cross hairs and smiled, knowing I was committing my presence in the life of our first daughter, born on February 25, 2000. I repeated that commitment to another plus sign a little over a year later.

How's that for positive parenting?

'By observation, and without even thinking about it in a structured way, I came to define 'father' as presence.'