Tiger’s Nest monastery sits at 10,000 feet. The climb up is three hours of switchbacks, thin air, and a drop on one side that makes you walk a little closer to the mountain than the edge. I did it with my son strapped to my chest. He was eleven months old.

People asked why we didn’t wait. Why put an infant through that climb when he wouldn’t remember a second of it.

Fair question. I didn’t have a clean answer at the time. I think I do now.

I wasn’t doing it for him to remember. I was doing it so that I would.

Somewhere around the second hour, legs burning, his weight shifting against my chest with every step, I understood something about my own father that I’d never quite put into words. Fatherhood isn’t a single decision made once. It’s a thousand small ones, repeated under load, often when no one is watching and the person you’re doing it for won’t remember any of it either. You just keep climbing anyway.

That’s not a metaphor I’m proud of for being original. It’s just the one that was true on that mountain.

We reached the top. He slept through most of it, woke up once, looked around at the clouds below us like it was nothing in particular, and went back to sleep. I stood there for a long minute before starting back down.

I don’t know yet what kind of father I’ll turn out to be. I know what I’m aiming at. Two years later, standing at a doorway instead of a mountain, I’d get some of that answer. It looks a lot like the version of my own father I’m only now starting to fully understand — the one who did the unglamorous, unremembered work of showing up, year after year, without needing credit for it.

You don’t get to know if you’ve succeeded at that while you’re in it. You just keep climbing.