On Becoming a Parent

Becoming a parent is probably the strangest thing that has ever happened to me. I use the passive tense as if Andrew's conception and healthy birth were an accident, which they were not. My wife and I had been trying to conceive for five years prior and had even suffered a miscarriage. Still, I can't help feeling like a passerby to a magnificent street performance where you stop and ask yourself, “What is this person doing here in Washington Square Park?” Then you squint your eyes and think, “Perhaps this is a gift just for me and the few dozen others gathered around.” The exception with Andrew being that the performer has now moved into your home and, apart from his daily ten minute performance, requires that you tend to his every need! Forget about that leaky faucet and that messy garage. Forgot to run the gas out of the lawnmower? Let it go! You used to like to come home and finish the newspaper? Never mind. Oh, and you used to think it natural to sleep through the night? Nuh uh! Your little impresario needs to eat. NOW! This, I take, is what all those friends, family, acquaintances, even strangers meant when they wagged their finger and said, "Everything's gonna change!"

The economy of living with and infant is straightforward: you feed it around the clock eight times a day. In return you will get ten minutes of mind blowing adorableness. Forget drugs, forget the best concert you have ever seen, and, dare I say it, forget the fun you had conceiving the little tyrant! There is nothing in the world like those ten minutes.

But there are unintended consequences to this little contract. Suddenly, your wife seems a little strange. Before Andrew came along, she seemed closer to you than your own soul. Now you look at her and hear that line from the Talking Heads, "Is this my beautiful wife?" Also, the basement, which used to be the place where you stored the Christmas tree, the old broken camera, and the unopened, unused sewing machine from your mother-in-law, now beckons. My dad spent A LOT of time in the basement when I was growing up, which I never understood until now.

This leads me back to my victimhood. I believe now that I am a victim--a victim of the hormones that made me desperate to impregnate my wife. No way was that rational! After just seven weeks of fatherhood, I can now say with certainty that free will is just a dream. Just take my little guy. He is completely programmed. That half smile he flashes once a day? Spontaneous, but still part of the instruction code, right? And my response? You know the rest.