No man is ever ready to become a father. You can talk about it, discuss
it, flog it into the ground until it expires with a despairing wheeze,
and still... you aren't ready to become a father.
But then, something magic happens. If you're lucky enough to be in the
vicinity while your child is being born, and all the horrific things
the mother has yelled hasn't caused the blood to burst forth in gushing
torrents from your ears, then you get to see the moment. The moment
when that purply pink wrinkled thing stops being an idea for you, stops
being a wiggly lump-in-the-tummy, and becomes an independent organism.
Your heart bursts with love.
Yes, even you, you super-macho, hunky, beetle-browed, gorilla-like
tough guy. Your heart bursts with love too. Even if you don't get to
see your child being born, the first time you hold them in your arms,
look down into their face, and realize that part of you is now alive
outside yourself, that you are newly immortal, and that birth truly is
a miracle, your heart bursts with love.
Of course there is a downside.
For next several years, you're going to experience conflicts between
what you want to do (go camping, watch TV, have a beer with your
buddies, go out to the club or a movie, eat hot food, have privacy in
the bathroom, make love with your wife, read a magazine article in one
sitting, or make one uninterrupted shot at the basketball hoop) and
what you have to do (change yet another diaper, make yet another snack,
learn all the names of the SuperAttackTechnoRangerPowerKids and their
allies and enemies, admire drawings that you can't comprehend, clean up
yet another spill, kiss yet another booboo, play yet another game of
War or Cootie, or drink the slobber from your just-shared soda). This
is not to say that having children entirely removes all your former
habits and hobbies from your life. Why, just three years ago I went
skiing, and I played a computer game last month. I even finished a book
last week, though I'd forgotten how the book began or even why I was
reading it.
But through it all, the rewards for being a conscientious father will
continually outshine the price that you pay for becoming one. It is my
firm belief that no man can reach his peak of maturity - his ultimate
expression of his maleness, without becoming a father.
You will learn many things as you experience the journey that is
fatherhood. And I'm not just talking about where your wife keeps the
Band-Aids and the baby aspirin. Or how long a road trip can be when you
have lively, healthy, children in the back seat. (Yes, it takes just as
long, if not longer, as it did when you were that same child.) No, what
I speak of is the long journey of self-discovery that can only be
precipitated by the demand of having another human being's welfare
entirely dependent upon your lazy butt.
I've learned a lot since I became a father. I have become more
protective, more self-reliant, more caring, gentler, stronger, and
wiser. I attempt to provide my children with the image of a man as I
believe a man should be. This image keeps me from fighting with my wife
as much as I used to. It forces me to fix the bookcase, and repair the
bike tire. It makes me -surly and reticent in the past -communicate
with people, because I believe my children should. I try to show them
what a good man should be, and in the process, almost accidentally, I
discover that I am becoming a good man myself.
Whenever I use this image, whenever I strive toward the goal ofteaching
my children what a husband and father should be, I become more than I
thought I was. This is the most powerful gift that my children have
given me - not just the chance, but the responsibility to become a
better person.
For my sake and for theirs, I continue the journey. Someday, I know,
I'll be able to eat a meal while it's hot, watch a movie in silence, or
go swimming without six bags of pool toys. But for now, I try to relax
and enjoy it. All of it. Because it will be gone as suddenly as it came.
You can find more of Jay Turley's musings at Weberrific.
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