Certainly, my normal routine has changed. I have several alarms set to wake me up to help Hanna pump breast milk, my to-do list has many baby-related items, and my checkbook ledger has new entries for stores like "Babies R Us" and "Maternal Connections" -- in fact, this was so different that my credit union called to make sure my debit card had not been stolen. I do feel differently, as well. I have more worries than I did a few months ago. I think about how best to be a good role model, I wonder if I have the skills I should to be able to care for children, I worry about how the hell I'm going to pay for all of this. Maybe that's part of fatherhood. But I don't think any of that answers the question of what it feels like to be a father; that's just how it feels to act in the role of one. Despite the two hospital-issued wrist bands that quite literally label me as the father of Duncan and Tristan, I don't feel much like a dad.
I think the best answer I've yet heard to my conundrum came in an email from a college friend of mine, a fellow with a reputation for being irreverent. After some joking around, however, he wrote this:
"Ok, seriously, your ritual/rite-of-passage will quietly come, if it hasn't already, at around 11pm, standing in their room, when everything's quiet, and you realize you're there to keep the world separated from two little lumps of malleable, fragile humanity. You'll realize they will eventually do what you're doing, and you'll realize you have your work cut out for you. You'll also realize that you'll do it, and you'll do just fine."That moment has not come for me yet, possibly because the twins are still at the hospital; my responsibilities are fairly limited at the moment, as there's an entire medical staff looking after my children. But as they come home, I think I might have that quiet moment of revelation. Perhaps then I'll have an answer to my dad's question.
2 comments:
It doesn't feel right yet because in a sense they aren't quite yours yet; not while the hospital has them. Not that this is a bad thing, these boys need the care, but it's like babysitting your nephews. At the end of the day you go home and someone else cares for the kids.
Once you are in your home, with you and your wife holding your sons, these precious, helpless copies of yourselves that you made together, each unique, each your finest and greatest creation, THEN you will feel like a father.
To paraphrase Matthew 3:17
And a voice came from the heavens, saying, "These are my beloved Sons, with whom I am well pleased."
There will come such a moment, I promise.
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