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Friday, June 29, 2018, was my son’s first birthday. I wrote a letter for the adult version of him if/when he decides to be a parent, explaining some of the things I learned and the complex emotions I’m feeling on his first birthday. But it’s also for any other young or expecting parents, about the challenges and revelations of the first year of parenthood. Maybe you can find some wisdom or some commonalities in it.
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Today, June 29, marks your first birthday. Your mother and I woke you up this morning by singing “Happy Birthday.” You crawled around the house as usual. You pushed your baby-sized shopping cart across the living room, smiling at us all the while.
This morning, in the shower before work, I cried. I’m still not sure why. I think back to when you were younger, how quickly you’ve grown, and your mom crying in bed last night saying that “It’s moving too fast.”
I think about how, before I know it, you will be 18 and graduating high school. I think about how wonderful this small, innocent stage of your life is, and how quickly it is passing, and how it reminds me of how quickly my life is passing.
Before you were born, I wasn’t sure I wanted to be a parent. I wasn’t sure I wanted the responsibility or the time commitment. And I’m assuming that someday you may feel the same.
Someday you may be in the same situation that I was, a 20-something early in his career indifferent toward parenthood. Or, maybe you’ll be in the exact same situation that I’m in now, ruminating on your child’s life in lieu of his or her one-year birthday.
In either case, I wanted to draft a letter to the future you – and any other soon-to-be parents or those considering parenthood – about some things I’ve learned in my first year of being a father.
Before we had you, I never realized just how much I had taken my parents for granted and all the sacrifices they made for me. The first night after you were born was hard. Before you, sleep was the blissful interval between night and morning. The first night with you, I awoke to your cries an hour or two after falling asleep. Bleary-eyed and exhausted, we cared for you, went back to sleep, awoke again – rinse, repeat.
Those nights continued for another six weeks, interrupted by a brief hiatus where you started sleeping through the night. And then, a few months later, you got your first ear infection, and thus ensued six months of on-and-off infections, teething, and who knows what other ailments that bothered you at night. We woke up two to three times a night, all while I commuted two hours a day.
On those sleepless nights, when a tooth was coming in, or one of your many ear infections caused your head to throb, and your mother held you for too long so needed a break, I would hold you and try to console you and often fail. I struggled with that, Charlie. I got frustrated. I was exhausted, and the only thing between me and sleep was your bawling that rang in my ears.
And then I would imagine myself at your age, my face pinched as I bawled due to some inscrutable discomfort, and my parents consoling me. And I realized that the only reason that I’m here today is because the two people who took care of me thought I was worth the effort.
And you’re worth the effort, too, Charlie.
Another thing you’ve done for me is give me a sense of humanity that I’ve never felt before. Anytime I get mad at other people now; I can easily disarm my frustration by imagining them just as you are now, crawling about the house.
You don’t use words that cut or sting – instead, your language is a soft babbling, a cipher yet to be decoded. You don’t know hate, just raw anger you feel whenever you can’t express yourself. Instead of your personality having already been taken and shaped by the world and its occurrences, you are putty yet to be molded, navigating a world that will reveal itself to you in layers, each one more honest and brutal than the last.
I keep struggling with that. With just how small and innocent you are, soon to be introduced to a world that is neither.
You’ll start walking soon, then talking, then reading. We’ll start playing video games and sports together. You’ll go to school, then before we know it you’ll be graduating and going to college (if that’s what you want to do).
And along the way, you will gain a complex spectrum of emotions, both good and bad. You’ll face all sorts of challenges – broken hearts, dissolving of friendships, sadness, an increased awareness of just how infinitesimal you are in a massive and complex world.
But you’ll realize the happiness, too. The blind joy you have now will evolve into something more sophisticated, one that will have the immeasurable pleasure of getting to read Harry Potter and The Lord of the Rings for the first time. The same one that gets to travel to new places, to also find joy in the world’s tangle of cultures, sights, and history. The joy of getting your first pet, of falling in love for the first time.
As I write this, Charlie, I’m starting to realize why I cried this morning. Because on a day like today, I know why parents cry when their child gets married or graduates college or passes some other milestone in their life. Because those parents are thinking back to their children when they were at the same age you are today, and the sheer blissful innocence, and think back to all the days in between and every ounce of time and energy and effort they poured into raising them.
If we could choose otherwise, would we as parents want our children to eternally stay as infants and toddlers? And that’s also why I’m crying, Charlie. Because the answer is no. One day, you will have to face the Real World. Because I know that you have no choice. Part of the reward of parenting is watching you grow into the man you will become.
So whenever you become a dad, and you’re holding your child one night when he or she can’t sleep, and you’re exhausted and frustrated, and you have to go to work the next day on a few hours of sleep, I want you to think back to this fact. That your mother and I thought you were worth it.
That our parents thought we were worth it, and their parents, and their parents. That you and your child wouldn’t be here today without generation after generation of your relatives, or someone else who loved you dearly, thinking you were worth it.
Your child is worth it, too.
I love you so much. Happy Birthday.
Dad
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This post was originally published on johnpost.wordpress.com and is republished with the author’s permission.
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Photos courtesy the author
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