On Fatherhood

As with many things in life, it's hard to know how it's really going to be until you experience it.  No matter how much preparation you think you have, when the actual time comes, you are just along for the ride and hope that you don't mess up too bad.  People would say how you don't know how you'll be able to love someone as much as you do your children.  You think, I've experienced love before, this must just be more of it.  It's amazing how much of an understatement that really becomes once you look into the eyes of your child.  For a father it's a little different because it takes a few months of looking into their eyes before they start to show signs of recognition and understanding that you as an entity are going to keep showing up.  Also after a few months they transform so much and into the start of a person.  Plus it doesn't hurt that my daughter thinks I'm the most hilarious shaved ape out there.

The part that they don't really talk to you about is the sheer terror that's constantly in the background.  It's a bit like that low level hum you hear when near power lines.  Even when things are going well and you've had a good dad moment, I feel it in the back of my mind.  If you read the news for even a minute, you get the impression that the survival rate of the average person is pretty bleak.  If you are lucky enough to avoid some random tragedy or bout of senseless violence, then there is a whole host of parasites, viruses, and cancers that are willing to eat you from the inside.  Then again it seems like the whole point of the news is to keep you paying attention to the news for just a little longer.  Is the world really such a terrible place?  Is life really that hard?  I know that for some people it's harder and shorter than it should be, but we've been blessed with a fairly safe and happy environment.  Still, I look at her and don't like thinking about there being a moment when she figures out that the world isn't as magical as I've made it out to be.  Sometimes I wish I could just take her out of this reality and off into cartoon land.  The logical part of me knows that this isn't fair to her as a person, but I don't know how to handle when they find out that the world as a whole doesn't really care about them in the way that their people care about them as an individual.  I wonder about what lies I'll have to tell to keep her safe a little longer.

I've found myself looking at everyone very differently.  Seeing my daughter experiencing the world for the first time, I wonder how any person becomes what they are today.  Even the asshole who cut me off this morning was once a child.  Once, a long time ago, they had a world of potential, where they could dream of doing or being anything.  They still may be on that journey, but that route went directly in front of MY journey.  Granted it doesn't always change the way I interact with people because I'm still me.  There are moments where I can't help but wonder how someone's life brought them from being a wide-eyed child to a cynic.  I suppose one could ask the same of me and I had a pretty good childhood.  I look differently at various forms of entertainment too.  Movies and television where characters are killed or hurt make me wonder what would it be like to be their parents.  I still enjoy the things I always have, it's just now there is an added bit of empathy that intrudes in on everything.

I worry about what she's going to be like when she's old enough to realize I'm not the funniest person on the planet.  There will come a time when she doesn't want to hang out with me, which only makes me want to spend that much more time with her now.  I want her to be smart and clever and funny and able to exist in the world without me because if everything goes according to plan that's how it's going to be.  I worry about being around for as much of her life as possible.  I worry that all those stupid cheeseburgers have quietly stolen years from me.  I worry that one day I'll be driving and look right when I should have looked left and have my story with her end.  I worry about her life and all the things that could happen and won't even say them here, in some superstitious belief that I don't want to give them power, in the event that there is some malevolent entity controlling our reality that would find humor in taking my daughter from me.  I worry about how she's going to handle love.  I wonder if she'll find a partner in life like I did.  I hope it doesn't take her as long to get there as it did me, even if it was worth the wait.  I worry that I may never get to see her own children, if she decides to have them.  Basically I worry about everything.

Even with all that being said, I've been rewarded with this tiny happy, crazy, curious person in progress that looks to me like I'm the expert on life.  It would be silly to say I hope I don't screw up because it seems impossible to not make mistakes along the way.  I just hope that she's able to forgive me for not having all the answers.