*Disclaimer* -- this is being written after twelve days of sick children. My previous post about how great the kids were was before their snotty noses and congested chests kept them from sleeping through the night. We've been sucking snot and boogers out of their heads with a medieval torture suction device for almost two weeks. And we're sick too. And I've been barfed on three times in the last two days. Without request or consent. So if you read this at any time and think, "fuck, this guy is bitter", consider the circumstances.
*End Disclaimer*We had my father-in-law's 60th birthday party on Saturday night. It was a really fun time, many of his friends and family came out. The wife and I (read my wife) put together a nice collage of pictures of my father-in-law's youth; from the time he was a baby to high school and beyond.
My father-in-law's mother was also there. She's in her late 70s. During the party, my wife and I quizzed her about the pictures of my father-in-law. We recorded this on video. While I was filming this, I thought about how damn cool it is that my kids get to see their
great grandmother tell stories and explain pictures of their grandfather from when he was just a baby. What an amazing thing to be able to share with them! Putting myself in their perspective, I can't imagine how neat it would be to see video of my great grandparents (who I never knew) explain what kind of children my grandparents (who I barely knew) were.
It was one of those "neat" things. One of those things that makes you feel awesome inside.
When we were expecting children, I was annoyed at how many people would pat me on the shoulder and simply tell me that having children "changes everything". There were variations on this, of course. "Nothing will be the same", "you'll never view things the same", the perpetually aggravating "get your sleep now", and the ever-so-nice "advice" I got from a defense lawyer in Florida, "you won't get a full night's sleep for about....oh.....eight years".
I took this advice with a smile. Inside I was thinking, "Thanks a lot, asshole". What the shit kind of advice or guidance is it for an expectant parent to hear how much stuff is going to change? How does that help? What the fuck does that even
mean? "Everything is going to change", shit these people made it sound like I was living in some pre-apocalyptic utopia where everything was nice and nothing was going to hurt you. The pre-judgment day from the original Terminator movie, only to be met by a future plagued with sub-par special effects of death machines flying through the sky to kill me.
Turns out, it was probably the best advice anyone
could offer.
How do you explain being a parent? How do you tell somebody else how to expect to be a parent? Everything about this experience is new. All of it. The clearest thing about all of this is that it has, in fact, changed everything. Our life pre-baby is done. Over. It simply doesn't exist. Who I was pre-baby is done. This is an amazing job, and you really have to take it all. You have no other choice.
My wife and I left the kids with the grandparents for a little while today so we could go shopping for groceries and stuff without them. We were gone for about two hours. We talked about how much things have changed. There's the things that we miss. The obvious things are easy, things like sleep, naps, dates, stuff like that -- that's easy. But there's the other stuff. We miss not having to have our lives revolve around the feeding schedules of these two small lives. We miss being free to head out at night to meet with friends. Even the simple act of
lounging is gone. That 30 minutes to an hour in the mornings on the weekend when all you non-parent people hang out and do nothing while you figure out your day -- that doesn't exist. Finally, we miss the financial freedom that comes from not having to spend hundreds of dollars a week on things that will be consumed either in food or in clothing to catch the food once its processed.
Our entire lives revolve around
their lives. All of it. Planning, my work schedule, sleeping, cooking meals, making bottles, going to the store, even the most simplest of tasks, like having a moment to take a nice half-a-magazine dump or a shower
has to be scheduled around their needs.
And it never ends.
We will always be their parents. We will always be responsible for keeping them alive and helping them grow into peoples their communities can count on. We can't "walk away" from any of this. There's no left-handed relief pitcher warming in the bullpen to bail us out. It's just us.
But that's the way it is. That's what being a parent is. And that's what all those assholes were trying to tell me when they told me that this experience would "change everything".
The reward for this is paid out in small, but valuable, pieces. A smile. A laugh when you walk in the room. A baby that stops crying when you pick it up, because you're it's daddy and they love you. The look on a baby's face when you go in the morning to get them and they look up and say "hey, you came back for me"! Seeing how your baby really is
yours as it gets older and bigger and makes it clear that it really is a part of you. These brief and fleeting moments overwhelm any despair that even a more cynical father than myself might harbor. It really does fill up the old emotional bank account. So much so that events like when my boy barfed on me twice today become "cute".
The strangest thing about all of this is that it's
all worth it. The crying, the sleeplessness, the stress that comes from having newborn twins, it does all pay off. Sometimes in big pieces, sometimes in small ones, but for every moment where something makes me think "gahhh", there's a more valuable moment where I'm flat out floored by this whole experience. In a good way. I'm sure this continues. I'm sure I'll bitch to no end when I find out that my kids were lippy to their teacher in class, but I know they'll pay it back to me somehow. They better.
Everything really has changed. The idea that being barfed on twice in a day would be "cute" just goes to show that what was the way it was a year ago is gone. How in the world could anybody have possibly told me any of this in a level of detail sufficient enough for me to understand what they meant?
Cutting back to the start, while I was recording my grandmother-in-law talking about her son, my father-in-law, I realized that this is truly a universal experience. We're fortunate to be able to share that moment of family history with the kids, long after their great grandmother and their grandfather are both no more for this Earth. I have a feeling that while granny was telling the story about her son, she was also feeling some great sense of how much everything paid off for her too.
So if you're having a child, and you happen to ask me anything about what's in store, please don't think less of me if I grab your shoulder and just tell you that everything is about to change.
