Dad Talks #9: Marc Typo

In conversation with the writer and new-ish dad

I’ve never met

Marc Typo

. In fact, conducting this interview was the first time we ever spoke (beyond trading comments on each other’s newsletters). But I feel like I know Marc all too well. I sympathize with the fact that Marc left New York City—where he was born and raised—to raise his child in the South, where he and his wife could be closer to her family. I understand the late, sleepless nights with his son that Marc writes about. I know all of the fears he describes because, since becoming a father, I’ve lived them myself.

What I appreciate most about Marc is that he’s doing the same kind of work that I’m trying to do through this newsletter. That is, to normalize and foster honest, earnest, and heartfelt conversation about fatherhood.

Marc writes the beautiful Substack Raising Myles, which you should all subscribe to immediately. Through a series of letters to his now-seven-month-old son Myles, Marc unfurls and explores all of the feelings, emotions, fears, and joys that come with being a father. Through his newsletter, Marc is walking the walk of being a father who is unafraid to express his vulnerability and his fallibility.

Your Substack offers a unique perspective in that it’s not about your son. What made you want to write to your son?

Well, I read Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates and what stood out to me was that I don’t have anything from my father to have now, and I can’t locate memories of joy, love, and sadness from that time. So I started writing these as what I call “Generational Artifacts.” Like, what can I pass down to my son? These letters are things I can pass down, and things he can pass down to his son, and things for him to know exactly who I was.

Right. I have something similar I wrote a few years ago, shortly before my daughter was born. Basically, I call it my “Guidebook to Life.” But really it’s just thirty-five of the most important lessons that I want my kids to know in the event that I’m not here. Hopefully, they’re things I will be able to tell them myself.

Right. Exactly. Because tomorrow isn’t promised, I guess my goal is to be able to capture who I am, just in case I’m not here; for Myles to be able to say, “This is who he was but also what I was.”

It’s also a letter to the father that I didn’t have myself. So how do I create this new legacy that says, “Hey, I was here.” And so these letters are also a call to challenge myself to continue to show up no matter what. My father didn’t play a big role in my life and I turned out fine, at least fine the way I think. But I don’t want him to ever say what I said; “Hey, I don’t need a dad.” So I’m trying to remind myself that I’m wanted and needed in this space. It’s almost like these letters are living proof that I was here.

One thing I always wrestle with in the context of my newsletter is how I’m writing about two kids who never consented to having their shit aired out on the internet. Every time I sit down to write this newsletter, I’m constantly asking myself whether anything I’m saying is crossing any boundaries. When writing about your son, does anything give you pause?

Yes, 100%. Sometimes my wife tells me I’m way too honest. So I have to make some changes knowing that people are reading these but also our families are reading this. So what I share and how I share is always on my mind. And I can’t always be as honest as I want to be. But those things, those moments that are too intimate, I just email them to Myles. So we still have a document of the thing, the idea, the sentiment.

The pause is real though. I have to ask my wife’s permission with some things. Because she’s my wife, my partner, she becomes complicit in whatever mess I might make, you know?

Absolutely. Which brings me to my next question: how does her input play into the newsletter?

I only ask her advice when I’m sharing something really, really personal. And if she says, “Don’t share that,” okay. That’s it. I won’t.

But I do a lot of voice messages too, little notes, and through all of this, I’m trying to capture who we are in our journey. Hopefully I keep this up long enough that, as we get older, he’ll hear a different voice. Like, what does our life look like not only through writing but through audio and video and those things.

We have these old photo albums but those photo albums don’t really speak to me. So I’m trying to use all those modalities to capture all of these things for him.

Man, I really love that. One of the hardest days in the process of mourning my mother was the day I accidentally deleted a voicemail I had from her. Going through that grief was, in a way, harder than the process of her actually dying. Her voice was gone. And all I had left were these pictures, one less element of her. We have access to these mixed media so why aren’t we using all the tools at our disposal to leave a kind of trail of crumbs for our babies?

Right. And these things we’re doing will outlive us. And someone will be able to look us up and say, “Wow, he’s done work.” And I know that even if we live to a hundred, it’s limited time.

What has the process of writing this newsletter taught you?

I didn’t think this was going to be special. But I created it because I need pressure to perform. And doing it publicly creates this pressure to keep showing up. And doing it publicly has taught me that people need to hear these stories. Me being vulnerable has allowed other people to be vulnerable, too; to share their stories as dads or about the dads they wish they had. It’s contagious in a way and that makes me encouraged to keep doing it. People are reading it and experiencing this kind of joy.

I’m grateful for writers like you and a couple other guys I follow because, when I moved to a new place, I was looking to make sense of what I was going through. And so your vulnerability inspired my own vulnerability because I saw through that that it was safe to do this work.

Exactly. It’s safe to do this. But I didn’t always know that. You didn’t know that. A lot of dads don’t know that.

Exactly. Also, a lot of the top parenting blogs and newsletters are women and white women. So my perspective is desperately needed.

And a lot of parenting stuff is service journalism, too. “Here’s the best baby carrier or here’s the best stroller.” I don’t need that shit. I don’t want that shit. I want to read a guy who was equally as terrified as I am right now and I want that guy to tell me that it’s gonna be okay. So much of it is “Here’s how to be a parent.” I want “Here’s how it feels to be a parent.” I that’s one thing I love so much about Raising Myles. It’s almost pure feel.

Right, exactly. Thanks for saying that. And most of the content I see about fatherhood is about the lack of the presence of it and what not to do. But there’s not enough about what we are doing. There’s also the question of, “What does it mean to center the voices of dads who just love being dads?” And we get to love our kids and also our wives and those conversations need to happen.

I always end these interviews with the same question. What kind of father was your father?

My dad had me at a young age, I wanna say mid-20s. And he came to this country not even being able to speak English, so there were all these barriers.

I asked him when we were thinking about having a kid why he wasn’t really there for my younger brother and me. And he told me straight up that he just didn’t know what to do. So it was easier not being there than to be present. So I’ve given him a lot of grace for not being there because there’s reasons why he wasn’t. I’m not saying they’re good reasons, but I get it.

No, I totally get that. One thing I’ve realized since having kids—and maybe this makes me sound like an asshole—but I understand why dads split on their families. I’m not saying I agree with it, nor do I forgive it. But I get it. And I never understood it until I had my own child and realized how difficult it was and how alone I felt in this process.

Yes! Oh my goodness, yes. And although I have a lot of trauma from him not being there, I do give him a lot more grace. And as a result of that, I’m raising my inner child along with raising Myles. So these newsletters are for Myles but they’re also a way to process what I didn’t experience as well.