The way it is supposed to go, is that the nurse hands your son over after an interval of heart wrenching agony where you bear witness to the miracle of life while doing your best not to pass out. Nurses will joke about your frailty and its opposition to your apparent masculinity as if it is 1950. Lives you care about will seem to hang in the balance outside your control but your sensitivity to this situation will be laughable. The way it is supposed to go, this banter will be the worst part. When you hold your son for the first time, the world as you understand it will crumble to dust. You have been warned of this. Your every decision and thought, right up until that moment, will have been predicated on a philosophy described as “what’s in it for me” with variations on that theme subject to your nature and age. This is how it is supposed to go.
I can tell you that it might not go like it is supposed to. The nurse might not hand the baby over because the baby might not be able to breathe. All banter will cease. The chaos of the birth might get elevated even further, and your son might be taken from the room while you sit next to the woman that isn’t your wife. You may do your best to comfort her even though you don’t know her very well and you aren’t sure what to say. So you might not say anything at all. In the silence, as you hold her hand you might have time to realize that some parts of the plan went perfectly. You didn’t get to hold your son, but the world as you had previously understood it has crumbled to dust all the same. As you wait, together and alone, for someone to come back and explain the situation; you might come to the realization that whatever might happen there will be no going back to the way things were before. You have begun to understand that you are not the hero of the story. The story is long, and you weren’t even there for most of it. It is going to keep going after you die. Those were my thoughts anyway, as best as I can reconstruct them all these years later, when things didn’t go like they were supposed to.
I did hold my son. It was much later, after he was strong enough to breathe outside of a special plastic chamber that supplied him with oxygen and other ingredients for life. He was very small at first, not much bigger than my hand. All of the contraptions, wires and tubes which kept him going were nothing compared to the shock of his size or his translucent skin. He was born much too soon. When brief periods outside of his chamber became possible, his mother and I alternated days holding him to our chest for about 10 minutes. This was called skin-to-skin and was explained as being very important to his development. At the time, I was working in the mountains as a carpenter. When I showed up to that job on the first day, the boss had been told that he was going to get a carpenter and a laborer. I didn’t know any of this at the time but the laborer had flaked out, and because I was so young he assumed it was actually the carpenter that had flaked out. I spent the next several weeks digging holes and trenches and then each night I drove over two hours to a hospital to have the opportunity to hold my son for 10 minutes every other day. I didn’t mind, even on the days when it wasn’t my turn. The shovel afforded plenty of space in my brain to ponder my son. My love for him was so intense that in any other scenario it could be described as unhealthy. This affliction will last until I die.
The darkest and most unfillable hole that a father has in their heart is called the unknown. The boy’s future was uncertain from the moment he was born, just like everyone else’s, but everyone else’s future is not my concern. Would he survive these early days? What sort of life would he have? As answers to those questions started to form, other questions would sprout in their place. The hole is dark, and can never be filled.
I came home from work one day, ready to take a quick shower and then make my way to the hospital, and his mother came in the door with him in her arms. He was ready to come home, and she wanted to surprise me. We were a family on that day, and have been since. He had many doctor’s visits plus speech, occupational and physical therapy. We were poor enough to qualify for free peanut butter and health care. We lived in a house with my brother and his eventual wife, which my parents owned. He absorbed all of our love and reflected it back tenfold. When he first walked, his entire hand wrapped around one of my fingers, I sobbed so intensely that my efforts to put one foot in front of the other rivaled his. Until that moment, I did not know for sure that he was going to walk. He didn’t have this fear, and he hadn’t yet learned to waste his time in anxiety about his future. His primary response was joy. This was the correct response.
After he could walk, he walked all over the place. One day he walked over to me with his arms outstretched signaling for me to pick him up and hold him for the last time. I don’t remember the specific time that this happened. Maybe it was because he got hurt. It could’ve been because he was overwhelmed in some kind of social situation—being shy. Maybe he was tired. I just know that he doesn’t do that anymore. He’s far too big now. There are many things that he did for the last time. One day he looked at me and saw me as flawless for the last time. Another day he woke up thinking I could protect him from anything for the last time. That is how it is supposed to go.
These ‘last times’ pass by unnoticed, left for some future reflection at best, if you’re even the reflecting type. Fatherhood seems at first daunting, the weight of it unbearable. There are days, of course, when it is. Mostly though, it is a collection of moments when you just happened to be there for nothing special or important. To answer a question as best you can. To cheer when he makes a basket, or when he doesn’t. Sitting next to him and watching a TV show. Waving goodbye on his first day of school, but also on his 151st day, and his 451st day and so forth. Helping with math homework. Showing him how to carry a plate of food without dropping it. Driving him to the mall. Exposing him to your music, your favorite foods, and your greatest flaws by just letting him watch you go through your life.
Fatherhood is embracing the mundane, and letting go of your ambition. I am relentlessly tempted to spend my time in service of a more tangible success because taken on a day-to-day basis raising a child is about spending your time doing nothing. You can’t predict when they will have an important switch fire off in their brain. Maybe an important question has been on their mind but they are waiting for exactly the right moment to ask it, and maybe it takes dozens of hours for them to find that moment. Do those dozens of hours come in a few days, or in a few months? Being there is easy when they need you to be there all of the time, but eventually they can manage without you. This is when the real work begins, because if you give in to the temptation to let them manage without you, they will. There are many ways to fail as a father, but there is only one way to succeed; you have to show up.
I didn’t choose fatherhood the first time, but I was certain about having another one. He got a sister, three years his junior. Her birth wasn’t overly complicated by comparison to his. In addition to differences that come with gender, her personality was wildly different from his. I haven’t really known silence since she was born. One day, slightly before she became a teenager, she stopped being able to process carbohydrates. She lost a lot of weight, and became unquenchably thirsty. Eventually, in the lobby of a hospital as we waited on blood tests I focused all of my energy on keeping it together. Her mom cried, and she actually consoled her. There is no cure for diabetes, but it can be managed with a lot of work, they explained. Later, alone in my car I pulled over because I wasn’t able to see the road through my tears. My sobs put control over the wheel into doubt. This, I’ve learned, is actually how it is supposed to go. Imperfectly.
One day you may see an old picture of them, and realize you can’t even recognize their face. The shape of their eyes, their laugh, and of course their size have all changed so much that you can no longer see them as a child. They might say things that are so hurtful you can hardly contain your anger. Sometimes, you might not be able to contain your anger. In their newfound struggle to be seen as an adult, they will make many miscalculations and they will take you for granted. That is also how it is supposed to go. That dark hole, the one that can never be filled—the unknown—remains, as ever. Will he be a good man? Will she be healthy? Will they be happy?
I hope to be able to answer these questions eventually, but I know other questions will just take their place. The story will keep going. Maybe they will eventually find out how unimportant they are to the story, like I did. If they do, on the heels of that realization will come another: they are the most important thing that there has ever been to their Dad.
Seriously unfair to have to sit an cry out of nowhere at 12:52 on a Monday.
Love this and you. They have a great father❤️👏