Well, I’m not obviously. But my wife is. Yes, this was very much planned. The baby is due on Thanksgiving and we don’t know what she’s having quite yet, not for another month at least.
How do I feel about this? Excited and anxious. There were points in my life when I thought that parenthood wasn’t in the cards for me but I think the years softened my stance on that. I think what cinched it was a very specific incident at Trader Joe’s. Picture it: the usual scene in front of the dairy case, with several people peering thoughtfully at the yogurt and wondering if to get non-fat or the decadent yet expensive Greek variety. I stepped up to grab something and a little girl rushed at my leg, wrapped her arms around my knee and squeezed with all her might. “DADDY!” she squealed. Obviously she meant to hug her father, who stood right by me also wearing jeans and wearing the same confused look as me. The little girl looked up and laughed at both of us, then ran to her sister with not a word of apology. A nicely dressed middle-aged woman next to me said ‘aren’t kids grrrrrreat?‘ and I nodded and walked toward the Three Buck Chuck.
Apropos of nothing, this little child just decided she wanted to tell her father that she loved him and I was the accidental recipient of that show of affection. Naturally, it affected me. It became an interesting anecdote for a few weeks and then it stuck in my brain. Maybe I could be a good dad?
I’m mainly looking forward to being out of what I consider the danger zone: infancy. Infants are scary and helpless and they cough and choke and stop breathing and their heads fall off when you pick them up wrong, right? When I told a close friend of mine that I wasn’t sure how I was going to handle the added anxiety of a child considering that I sometimes fall apart when I don’t have the right butter for something I’m making, he said ‘don’t worry because you won’t know real fear until you have a kid. Then you get over it and you’re better for it.’
We’ll see how things go. For now, we’re really looking forward to the first ultrasound and a nice trip to the San Juan islands for some whale watching.