A letter from a father to himself (before he was a dad).
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Dear Eric,
I’m afraid that words generally prove limp and impotent when employed in the process of describing the parental experience, but nonetheless I’m going to share a few with you…
You know by now, as you expect your first child, that deciding to reproduce is not a logical thing. The brain may indeed join the conversation — chiming in regarding monthly expenses, or how to most efficiently convert the office into a nursery — but this is a decision born from the heart, which is why it’s not only so hard to explain, but why it’s so mystifying to behold the fact that people and animals have done it now for centuries.
Your general sense of mystification is soon to increase. In fact, you’re soon to experience awe on a daily (and often minute-to-minute) basis. For a time, you thought of babies and thought only of their harsh smells and blaring sounds. But you’re soon to make a switch to regarding their eyes, their feelings, their personalities, the shape of their souls…
Now mind you, you needn’t submit to religion to become a parent. The fact that the experience is filled with wonder needn’t get you chanting mantras and wearing white togas with sandals. You will, however, broaden and deepen (lest you suddenly fall victim to stupidity or psychosis), as the child’s mother and you will be tasked with granting life to a full-blown human. And the granting, of course, does not conclude when the baby’s birth canal journey makes way for the world’s light — no. It’s a day-to-day thing. It’s pointing out trees and dogs, reciting numbers and letters, explaining and soothing and warning and pleading and repeating…
Unless you’re deluded, you’ll never be able to call yourself “good” at it, as the process goes on open-endedly, and presents opportunities for either failure or success at every moment. One excessively long gaze in the wrong direction, and you might miss the poor kid’s head connecting with the rim of a tabletop. One well-timed, fine-tuned facial expression, and you might fling him into a delirious fit of laughter.
Know this: A weight is soon to depart from your shoulders, as you’ll no longer carry the intensive burden of being the most important person in your own life. In fact, within less than a moment, if provided with the choice to trade your life for your child’s, you would bow and take your exit from the planet — and never look back.
Once was a time when you thought parents might love their kids due to some closed loop of genetically-driven narcissism — i.e., they loved their offspring because the kids were just an extension of themselves, much like a patio added onto the rear of a house.
But there shall soon come a time when the patio theory reveals its bogusness, for you’ll come to see that your child bears his own personality, the origins of which indeed have much to do with you and your wife’s blood and genes, but a great deal more to do with the eternal mysteriousness of human existence. You’ll not gaze upon your child and think, You’re part of me.
Instead, you’ll gaze and wonder with a smile: Where did you come from?
♦◊♦
There was also a time when you absorbed strangers’ judgment. The eyes and thoughts of those around you seemed to matter — at least somewhat, at least some of the time. But believe me: All you have to do is put in a few sessions at the supermarket where your child’s the unhinged maniac dishing grief and distraction to everyone in his orbit before you stop giving a shit what those assholes think.
‘Cause so what? He’s crying. Why shouldn’t he be? Is he not an overwhelmed pilgrim newly settling upon strange shores?
And besides, the child will not cry all the time. He’ll laugh, of course, as well. He’ll sleep deep, radiating plush, perfect silence, the wholeness of which is more cozy than an autumn cocoon. And in time, amazingly, he’ll start to speak, and in addition to wondering where he came from, you will wonder where he’s getting all this stuff from.
And you’ll love him like crazy, as countless others have said. You’ll smile when he crosses your mind. You’ll laugh, at times, when he crosses the room
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And you’ll love him like crazy, as countless others have said. You’ll smile when he crosses your mind. You’ll laugh, at times, when he crosses the room. And you’ll have to explain as the years go on, that you laugh not because you find him silly, but because if you didn’t release your adoration in the form of a sound, it would most likely swallow you whole.
I’ve embarrassed myself, I’m sure, by now. But I’ve done the best I can to speak across a great gap: from the parent to the non-parent. It’s not like I think every man should be a father, but since you’ve decided to walk this path, I thought I might attempt a concise head’s up.
‘Cause what’s ahead, my good man, is really something. Yes, the exhaustion might break you. And the fluids might shake you. The size of the task might at times overtake you…but you’re soon to gain a radical increase in your very aliveness. You’re soon to hear your own parents’ voices, from so many years ago, coming out of your mouth as you speak the parental language. Words embedded so deep within your mind that by now you surely should have forgotten.
But I gotta say, kid: You’re about to remember.
You’re about to remember.
If you forget everything else I’ve said just now, just hold onto this one:
You are about to remember.
See you soon,
Eric
Photo credit: Jlhopgood/flickr