The Premature Burial

Is it Friday already? I guess it is.

School laid into me with a vengeance. The textbook price is high, the reading list long, and as usual, the class that I am most interested in is the one with the lightest workload. Folklore has already demanded I sacrifice 300 words to its insatiable maw, forcing me to summarize reading. Introduction to the New Testament has exacted two pages, double spaced, explaining what I expect from the course. In my capstone class, Democracy and the Liberal Arts (selected because it best fit my busy schedule as a stay at home dad), I must research and present an article appropriate for the subject. What is the subject? I honestly don't know, but my instructor doesn't seem to know either so I guess I'm in good company. I haven't even gone to ASL III yet, that one only meets on Mondays, and I already tremble for the time it will devour. In short, my days are filled with short response papers and blackboard posts allowing little room for cooking, housework, and time with my beautiful bride and young progeny much less blogging.

I love you all, you mostly silently approving masses that adore my work. I don't want to let you down, but until May I don't anticipate having much time to ramble about writing craft or the philosophies of entertainment. I am buried alive under academic busy work. Give me a few months and I promise I will return from this ivory crypt and, hopefully, write a book.

See you on the other side.

This Magic Moment

People and cultures the world over try to control individual development through a series of rituals. We do Christenings and baptisms, or maybe a simple “child dedication” to acknowledge birth and initiate the young child into the religious institution of choice. We’ll celebrate birthday parties, and place that first lost tooth under our pillow. We rigorously prepare, both child and mother, for the first day of school. Oftentimes these rituals are only compulsory vestiges of a shifting culture. The American wedding is by and large meaningless, a formal recognition that two people will proceed to do what they have been doing for the past year (or six), and the college graduation ceremony is nothing more than a poignant commentary on the times that would be terrifying were it not so depressing. I may elaborate on that in the future. Sometimes, however, these rituals are successful in their aim. The baby shower, complete with silly gender guessing games and half-baked advice, both provides some of the physical accoutrements and the emotional reassurance a mother needs to ease into parenthood. The funeral offers a chance to make a sorrowful but clean break in relationships for the living, and may remind those left behind of why they care for one another.

This attempt to control or lives is futile, of course. There are moments that are expected and for some reason have no ritual attached to them, moments like receiving the first driver’s license. The freedom to go anywhere at any time, along with the trust the State places in you to move yourself at greater speeds and with more power than the human animal was ever naturally intended to wield, is unquestionably a more profound transition to adulthood than any high school prom. Then there are the moments that sneak up on you, moments that tear your world apart because they were unexpected, or the moments that slip by unnoticed, but in retrospect are recognized as the most important, revolutionary, devastating turning points in a person’s lifetime. I think I saw one of those today.

My wife and I just welcomed our second child into the world. This is of course a big deal to me, bigger than some might credit. Yes, we are responsible for this tiny life and yes, we will fail in ways both subtle and spectacular, and despite the love that brims and spills over in our hearts for this beautiful girl, we will most likely be the source of some of her greatest pain. This shouldn’t be as big a deal, though, because this is kid number two. We have gone through all of this already, but this is in part what makes it so complicated. Having two kids isn’t simply doubling down on the responsibilities. Now we have to worry about our relationship to each kid and how our relationship to one affects the other. When he sees us showering attention on his sister, is our son jealous? If we shuttle him off to Grandma’s house so we can deliver the new baby, then rest and recoup, will he think we gave him up for that new baby? It’s a little different for our daughter because she doesn’t have anything to compare her life outside the womb to, but having an older brother has undoubtedly already impacted her. We haven’t been able to shower her with the undivided attention we were able to give our son in his first hours, and we never will. It’s a negative synergy that leaves me feeling small and scared and out of my depth. This has been my struggle over the last 24 hours, and my son's behavior wasn't helping much.

Our son knows about babies, though he doesn’t tend to find newborns all that stimulating. They just sit there in their splotched red glory and sleep. He ignores them for the most part, and in his sister’s case he had to make a little extra effort to do so since she’s sharing his favorite source of comfort (mamma’s boobies). Over the last day and a half he has managed to explore every inch of the hospital room that we have allowed, and at least a foot and a half that we haven’t. Mamma has been a little less active in his life than he would like, but he has accepted the compensatory attention from his aunts and uncles with enthusiastic aplomb. He has reveled in the helium balloons sent to celebrate her birth, tried out a toy or two that she is not yet old enough to appreciate, and examined her pink clothing with acute interest, but the thing itself had been carefully avoided until late into this last evening hospital visit. Unexpectedly, he held out his hands toward her and grunted his request. He couldn’t hold her by himself so he pushed her away once I offered, but he did cautiously touch her ear and feel her downy hair, and with a little encouragement, kissed her head

Then he said her name.

He’s been paying attention. Though the full logistics and consequences of the situation are beyond his experience, he knows what’s up. His failure to acknowledge her was intentional, but I watched him change his mind. It was a tiny moment. We hoped for it, but couldn’t force it to happen. He’s too young to understand how to do ritual, much less why, and it didn’t happen in a way that could be so formally marked anyway. Odds are he won’t remember it at all, this life changing instant in which he accepted that our family is about more than him. But I will.