The longer I cling to life, the more the distinct patterns and arcs of our existence come into focus, perhaps as some sort of poor remuneration for the shame and disappointment such lingering engenders. Having largely survived the wedding season (a season which, much like the Westeros of Martin's Song of Ice and Fire, lasted years and years), our playground taunts prove prescient once more: first comes love, then comes marriage, and wouldn't you know it, then comes baby in a ridiculously expensive baby carriage designed to optimize cognitive development by, I imagine, not dropping them on their soft little heads.
In other words, my friends are having babies now, and as the phenomenon has spread from my fringe acquaintances ever inward toward and into my inner circle, I find that some of the myths surrounding parenthood bear some qualification. One very good friend nicely described it as genuinely falling in love with one's son or daughter, and I see as much in the way they describe their boys and girls, the iPhone quick-draw with the latest dozen photos of baby, the catalogue of the week's firsts. I confess, however, that is has been refreshing to also hear the ragged edge to which each parent has been pushed, be it the gruff admission that (x) "can be a little fucker" or (y) being held at arm's length and passed to mother to prevent daddy from burying baby in the backyard.
This isn't some new iteration of my affection for inappropriate humor, I assure you. Rather, it's the comfort in knowing that having and raising a child is as everything else: goods and bads, highs and lows. It makes it seem more possible, more attainable, which right now is something I need, I think.
I hadn't even held a baby until about six months ago. The experience was one fraught with self-consciousness, cradling the little man's head and body tentatively as I arched the rest of my body forward, so that should howling Dothraki on horseback burst through the back door, my torso would shield the child from the onslaught of arrows. Now I get it when I watch my friends hold their babies at a strange angle in the crook of their arm, sometimes askew or even upside down, and while I would never do so with someone else's kid, I'm already developing sketches of the obstacle course I'll construct around the house when my little one is strapped to Hurley's back and wearing a Batman / Batgirl outfit.
But I want the other stuff, too, of course. The iPhone quick-draw, the novelty t-shirts that fit for the majority of a single afternoon before outgrown, the garbled utterance that, if you think about it, must have been "you're right, Dad, the Oxfordian theory of Shakespearean authorship is a bunch of bullshit rooted ultimately in classism."
I joke regularly about the carnival of humiliations that emasculate me on a virtually daily basis, and I wonder if having another, utterly vulnerable human being to protect might be my last shot at the 'big time,' seeing as my glandular predispositions bar me from a luxurious pelt of chest hair or a Selleck-esque mustachio, those most recognizable and hallowed signs of masculinity. Then again, to even think so makes all too clear that I am not yet a parent. If there's one thing I've gleaned from my friends, it's that it isn't about you anymore. As an unrepentant narcissist, I find that a harrowing thought.
Still, I'd like to think I'm up to the challenge.
