My First Week as a Dad

The warning signs were there, which I chose to ignore: folks talking about how it takes men awhile to bond with their babies, that the early, gurgling grabber stage is not satisfying for us. And I recognize that I am a victim of the modern age, insisting on some kind of instant gratification for this decidedly long-term project Melissa and I have undertaken. But I was not prepared for the sheer drag it is going round-the-clock, day after day, with this sucking, shitting, pissing flesh bag I now call my son. At his worst as a puppy, my dog was so much less demanding, more comprehensible, more fun.

There are few more effective ways to ruin my day than to spend it in the company of women. And that’s one of the things that no one warned me about this whole baby thing, that women would soon be circling our home like sharks smelling blood, wanting to hold the baby, to feed him, to talk about how “handsome” he is. In one sense, I’m all for the visits, be they from friend, neighbor, or mother-in-law, as it means that much less time that I have to deal with my vacant-eyed lump. But all that cute baby convo has left me lurching somewhere between existential angst and the loony bin.

There’s a good man that I worked with, Nick, a proper Christian, a tosser of pints, a fan of Oingo Boingo and the Who, a father of four. When he was asked about how his night or his weekend went, Nick would typically respond with something along the lines of “I have four kids under the age of eight, how do you think it went?” Or sometimes he would opt for the more direct one-word response: “Brutal”.

At the time, I read this as the droll humor of a humble Midwesterner, not wanting to brag about being blessed with a big family. But now I wonder if there was not more than a dollop of straight talk in his comments, that maybe Nick was the only one direct enough to tell me the unvarnished truth.

And so I wonder what’s next. I’ve been told about the happiness I will feel the first time my son smiles up at me in recognition, about the 1,001 joys and surprises that await. So, at least intellectually, I am patient. But somewhere lurks the whispering suspicion that maybe it’s all a quiet conspiracy, and now that I am in on the joke, one of my friends who is a father and likes to hold court on the clever lines in “Ratatouille” or how much fun he has practicing T-ball with his son will nudge me at his next barbeque and snicker: “Gotcha”.