SOME THINGS are cherished according to one’s age and stage in life, and fatherhood is one of them. That is if you take the word of Alex “Earl” Gibson, who is basking in the glow of daddyhood, the second time around, with his two-year-old twin boys Bronson and Leandro.
Alex is no stranger to fatherhood. After all, he has two other children, 21-year-old Kyle and 19-year-old daughter Tyler, from a previous relationship. But his journey into fatherhood at 46 comes perhaps with a different perspective, one that has been seasoned with maturity. Though he and his wife Delia D’Ermo have been married for only two years, they were together for 18.
“I’m a seasoned dad,” he says proudly. “Plus, I had lots of sisters who had kids and I helped raise my nieces and nephews. I love kids.”
It was Alex’s comfortableness with children that helped him even calm the fears of Dalia when she was pregnant and having qualms about motherhood.
“I told [Delia] that natural motherhood comes easy,” he said. “Nobody has to teach you to be a mother; it just comes with the territory.”
Motherhood for Delia was something that happened later in life. Because of her age, 47, they enlisted the help of the Barbados Fertility Centre.
“That was the last window of opportunity for her,” Alex said. “By a miracle and with the help of IVF, it happened. I knew that because of her age it was the only option we could have.
“One of the most beautiful things about it is that you’re in the room and she’s there and they’re putting the eggs inside of her and you can see them going up. The doctor was telling me that the eggs will go up the womb and they will take the direction in the Fallopian tubes that they want to take. Five minutes later, they did – they turned on the right. It was the most incredible thing. It was like witnessing creation itself.”
While Delia couldn’t see it, Alex was privileged to witness the process with his sons.
“It’s alright to have a person pregnant, but you don’t actually see the process,” Alex said. “But watching that was great. That and her testing positive for being pregnant were two of my great moments – and then, of course, when they were born.”
Alex was a doting husband all throughout the pregnancy, and, of course, he was there for the birth.
“One of the nurses when she was ready to deliver said, ‘If you can’t stand the sight of blood, it might be better if you don’t witness’,” he said. “I told her I can take the sight of blood better than some doctors or nurses; it doesn’t faze me. When it was over, my wife said to me, ‘All I want to know is, do they have ten fingers and ten toes?’ I told her they were perfect.”
Fast forward two years, and you have two rambunctious boys running through the living room, riding their little plastic bikes, and, well, being boys.
“There isn’t a week that goes by that I don’t look at them and think, ‘In all our years together, this was the best decision we ever made’,” Alex said. “I always told her she would make such a good mum. We had always wanted to do it, but circumstances had it that she couldn’t do it.”
For Alex, too, it is very important that he is there for every stage of his sons’ lives.
“I always tell people that I’m a parent not a father. I grew up where my mother was mother and father together,” he said. “My father would come once in a while and give her a little money and go along, and I always told my mother that would never happen to me when I had children. My other two kids are big, but I go and see them every weekend. I participate in their lives. Sometime I turn up at my son’s football matches and he doesn’t know I’m coming, but I’m there. When he sees me he’ll say, ‘You’re here’ and I’ll say, ‘Yes I’m here’.”
Alex says that being there for his children is very important to him.
“It’s important to me because I never had it,” he says candidly. “I think that children are better off with two parents than one. A woman can only do so much, but you need a father figure. Sometimes if my older children were giving trouble, their mother would say ‘You know, I’m going to call your father’, and just the sound of my voice on the phone alone was calming.
“When I played basketball for Barbados, one of the best things was seeing my father in the stands watching me. I actually played better because I was proud that he was there. Sometimes I wonder what kind of person I would have been if my father was there more.”
Alex went on to say that even if you and your partner had broken up, it was still important to be there for the kids.
“This time around fatherhood is better; it’s easier,” Alex revealed. “Back when you are young you’re searching for your roots. You’re young and you feel you know everything, but you don’t. This time around it’s much easier.
Alex also highlighted the fact that he’s in a family setting, which also makes thing easier.
“One of the good things that I’m seeing is even the so-called bad boys are taking care of their children,” he said.
Alex feels the way a person is nurtured determines the type of father they will be.
“I like my Dad – I never hated him – but I realize it was the generation they were in. They didn’t know how to be fathers, how to hold kids and cuddle them and tell them they loved them. He told me a time, ‘I provide house, shelter, food – what more you want?’” Alex said. “Every time my father wouldn’t come by or give me something, it always made me more determined,” he said. “I would tell my mother, ‘When I get my kids, I’ll be a different person’.”
