The Man He Is

WHEN I GOT MARRIED, I thought I was ready to be a husband and father. My wife, Soroya, and I were in our twenties then, enjoying life together and starting our careers. She was a kindergarten teacher. I was a supervisor at a call center.

Four years into our marriage, we found ourselves with two boys. Marriage and fatherhood felt as natural as breathing.

Then I lost my job.

The experience rattled me to the core. All of a sudden, I wasn’t sure being a dad would be so easy. My father had held a job for 20 years, and here I was unemployed after a mere seven.

Eventually I found new work, but by then we had had two more kids and life had become a blur