Grand Rapids Press, Sunday 8.21.05
























Special thanks to Bob and Pat Good for sending this along.

My wish in life is to be able to say that I had seen what the world has to offer (inasmuch as one person can experience these things firsthand) and came to my own conclusions about the reality of the universe.

When asked one’s ambition in life, the most common (and thus, the most banal) answer is ‘travel.’ Ask anyone what they’d do if they came into millions of dollars, and I believe a vast majority of people would say they want to see the world. (Sadly, a vast minority would probably say they would do ‘nothing.’)

The sad truth is that I am in the vast majority. I would also answer, travel.

At different points in my life my itinerary was vastly different. As I grew older my plans became more grandiose. Naturally, as I learned more about the world, I had grander and grander wishes (dreams) about what I wanted to see.

When I knew the world mostly as the United States, my plans mirrored my limited knowledge. As a pre-teen I wanted to see the Grand Canyon, Mount Rushmore, the Great Redwood Forest. None of which I’ve seen, all of which I would still like to.

In high school I became enamored of the Great Pyramids, The Great Wall, the Amazon. Not only were these places farther away and more foreign in every sense of the word, they involved great treks across vast expanses, terrain occasionally so dangerous as to threaten serious injury or death.

Still haven’t been. Still wanna go.

My new dream (I have to buy a lottery ticket on Saturday) is that before each of his first seven birthdays, Jack has been on each of the seven continents.

I have it figured out.

We don’t really have to go anywhere for a year. His first year will contain plenty of pictures of him all over North America.

For his second year, we go to Europe. Maybe go to London, visit cousin Karen. Hit Scandinavia, go to Norway and meet some of Penny’s family. Maybe go to visit my cousin in Spain.

Year three we go to Asia. Check out Japan, maybe a picture at the Great Wall (kill two birds with one stone because that’s been on my list for so long.) We’ll check out a Buddhist temple. I’m not religious (as anyone who knows me can attest to) but it would be a cool experience (and you never know, maybe I’m wrong and Jack is the next Dalai Lama.)

By year four he’ll probably remember a lot from each trip. (I don’t have a lot of memories from before I was four.) Australia. Pictures from that year include Jack with a little outback uniform standing next to a kangaroo, Jack eating a giant barbecued shrimp, and, of course, visiting with his Uncle Stan and Aunt Ida.

Year five will be the African safari trip. While in Africa we go up to Egypt, take a cruise up the Nile, see the Pyramids. (Awesome sunsets!)

For his sixth birthday we all go and visit my mom and dad’s families in Argentina. Jack speaks Spanish (along with his surprisingly advanced English) so getting around will be easy.

The last continent we hit will be Antarctica. Pictures include Jack in a parka on the deck of a ship, Jack throwing a snowball, and the obligatory snapshots near a flock of Emperor Penguins.

If the lottery ticket (in whatever form it may come) that pays for this lifestyle hits big enough, starting at age 8 we hit them all again, and go to some of the spots we missed the first time around. Highlights include Montreal (where we went on our awesome honeymoon), Italy, The Taj Mahal, Great Barrier Reef, Morocco, The Andes and whatever else there is to do in Antarctica.

My dad drove a bus for over a quarter century. It was a job that sustained his family financially until three boys were at least out of high school. Within two years of retiring, he was dead from a massive heart attack. He was, quite literally, dead before he hit the floor.

It’s not a particularly original story. It’s sad; it’s not a tragedy. Had he stayed in Poland a couple more years, his life and death, very likely would have been truly tragic.

Tonight I sit at 2:00 am, some 20 weeks before the birth of my son. He currently weighs 12 ounces. He is already, to us, a little tadpole of a man. The pixelated representation given to us by the hospital (with the help of some very cool technology) has come to mean things to a suprisng amount of people. His burgeoning profile has bestowed, in the minds of those awaiting him, personality characteristics he may or may not some day possess.

The debate has begun on whose nose he has. Jokes have been made about his manly endowments based simply on the fact that we know he is male because of a hundred or so pixels that make up his scrotum in the sonogram.

Who will he grow to be?

I’m wearing black dress shoes, socks, pants; a white tee-shirt under a light-blue dress shirt - thin horizontal stripes of slightly darker blue run the height of the shirt, the length of each sleeve, giving the shirt a slightly uniform-like appearance. In their general formality (dress shirt, shiny shoes, creased pants), my current work outfits are not unlike the uniform my dad wore for 26 years.

I found out today that I make more money than a starting schoolteacher. I will make more money in my first year than a cop or firefighter makes in their first year. And while that gives me a sort-of cold comfort, it does almost nothing to alleviate the anxiety I feel toward my parenting skills, though I can’t pinpoint what that means.

Where am I lacking?

Though my opinions about ‘right and wrong’ may differ from those of many people, I feel they are in line with just as many (if not more) who agree with me. Even a pro-abortion (yes, even after falling in love with a sonogram), pro-education, anti-racist, atheistic secularist like myself is, in great likelihood, capable of getting a child into the first grade without causing irreparable psychological or emotional damage. (No one likes a 5-year-old with baggage.)

Does my anxiety come from some innate human condition or is it largely due to outside influences?



Everyone I speak with has an opinion (and I’m grateful for that, because nothing can prepare a person better than a diversity and quantity of opinions): It’s the best thing that’s ever going to happen to me. It is, without doubt, the worst thing I could possible have done. And everything in between. (A friend suggested I slam my dick in the car door, twice, as a reminder of…what exactly, I’m not sure.)

Since finding out that we’re pregnant, some people have told me stories about their experiences with child birth, stories so horrifying in their graphic detail that I’m surprised my heart has not simply exploded in my chest, a spontaneous, automated defense mechanism against the potential heartache having this child may (or may not) cause me.

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I’m working it out.

Welcome, Jack Crissman Rajczyk.