Tuesday, January 23, 2007

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.

...
...
...

I’m working it out.

No comments: