news

a friend of mine likes to use time and date stamps in her blog. I like to read them because it is comforting to know where to plant yourself on a map or chart. So I thought I would start that way tonight.

Tuesday, 30 Dec 2008

Driving north from North Carolina where I have just spent a week with my family for the holidays. My sister and her fiance were there, and my other sister and her husband and their daughter and his son, just a chaotic, messy family pile, which was joyful and affirming and wonderful. Now I am hurtling up Highway 81 through the mountains, which is a lovely drive, though perilous, because I am tempted to look at the beauty around me instead of the arbitrary, winding asphalt ribbon that I am supposed to navigate. In the back of the rented van is a dresser that was given as a gift to my great-grandmother by a friend that will soon hold my socks and underwear. Also a lot of christmas gifts that were too big for my sisters and their spouses to take home. I am a courier of family and christmas joy. Suits me fine.

Phone rings. It is Karen.

"I just took a home pregnancy test. It was positive."

Stand by world shift:

World Shift; Go!

In my little steel and plastic box I suddenly inhabit a completely different place, a different reality, with very, very different rules.

If you do not know me (though I do not think anyone reads this that does not. If so, hi. Otherwise, you already have heard this), you may not know that I have wanted to be a father for several years. Only recently has a friend of mine encouraged me to examine why this is, and I am still not sure. The only thing that I know for absolutly certain is that Pampers commercials and babies make me cry, and that I have been really interested in being a father since I was about 3o.

So.

Being (potentially) a father has become part of my life. Which is scary and wonderful and joyous and makes me real proud in a very "boy" sort of way which I am not terribly proud of but there it is. But we have had several people who are very very close to us that have had problems with their first pregnancy, so we played this pretty close to our chests, metaphorically speaking. This engenders a curious double life, because the main thing I have been thinking about I have not been able to really talk to anyone about.

Which feels a little like lying. Anyway.

Fast forward two months:

Tuesday, 03 February 2009

In the clinic we are holding hands and looking at the grainy black-and-white sonogram image of a real, honest-to-god human that is 5.15 centimeters (whatever the hell that is, I think it is equivalent to three quarters of a gallon or maybe six and a half tons or twelve degrees or something) long. I have several times been the recipient of a still photo of this kind of event. The proud parent-to-be thrusts this two-and-a-half inch by three inch image at you, and you resist the urge to make some comment about how it looks like an alien and say something congratulatory and encouraging while thinking "yeah, okay, it looks like a sonogram."

Let me tell you, when it is yours, you suddenly understand. When you see the heart beating (how many times in your life do you see a heart beating. I mean, really SEE the engine of life at work?), when you see the limbs moving, it is a transcendant experience. That little heart is beating because my wife has a separate life inside of her. We saw the arms (real arms! Two of them! With hands and everything!) moving around. It is a person, by god, and we are somehow responsible.

Now I am THAT guy, flashing his sonogram photo around all over the place, proud as all get out, like I had anything more to do with it than some unknown moment. "Hey! You want to see a picture of my kid?!?"

I am trying to resist this. I know in my heart that most people look at it and think "Yeah. Okay. It looks like a sonogram." So I am trying to reign myself in.

It feels good to have it out in the open. I am having a hard time concentrating. I am not doing well at keeping up with my friends. I am a little scattered. It is mostly because my inner monologue these days is wearehavingakidwearehavingakidwearehavingakid. Being out of the first trimester, we can tell people, and it feels good. I have felt, not like I was lying to my friends and co-workers, but that I was not being completely truthful. Now I can be: WEAREHAVINGAKIDWEAREHAVINGAKIDWEAREHAVINGAKID!

Nothing that I have made, nothing that I have done, nothing that I have acheived, has felt this big. Nothing, in thirty five years of life. This is bigger than big. I can't wait.