Rocket Ramblings

Who are you and what are you doing in my life?

Fatherhood.
FatherHOOD.

Sounds kind of like some sort of criminal act doesn’t it?

I wasn’t supposed to be a father you know. At the time that it came up, I was twenty-four and dreaming of a plush and adventurous lifestyle as a big time newspaper investigative reporter. My wife and I were barely married six months when she came to me and said, a matter-of-factly, “I want a baby.”

“And I want a Mustang convertible, but that doesn’t look likely in the near future now does it?” I remarked with a grin. I knew my wit would win her over and get us into the year and a half wait that I had tried to negotiate in the months before our wedding. The grin was confident and winning… or so it thought. She frowned with the ability to wilt roses that only a wife of many years can muster. I was amazed that she had mastered that frown so quickly. I tried to rally.

“How about something we’re better equipped to handle right now like an elephant instead?” I asked.

The wit wasn’t working; she held her ground. We launched into an intelligent and adult debate about it. It went something along like this:

“Baby.”
“No.”“Baby”
“No!”
“BABY DAMMIT… BABY!”
“NO! Not yet!!”
“BABY! BABY, BABY, BABY!!!!!!”
“NO! We aren’t ready!!!”
“I WANT A BABY NOW OR I WILL MAKE YOUR ENTIRE LIFE AS INHUMANLY MISERABLE AS POSSIBLE STARTING FROM THIS VERY MOMENT!”

Now how could you argue with logic like that? It’s not like she couldn’t come through on that threat, that’s for sure. You haven’t lived through hell until you’ve spent a weekend in a small one bedroom apartment with the spawn of all that’s unholy, and God knows she was prepared to play that part to the hilt. I’m sure she, of course, remembers that conversation quite differently though. In her mind, it must have gone something like this:

“Pat, it’s time to have a baby.”“Ok honey! Get’s get started!” Cue the flowery music, seg-waying into a neo-like soft core porn love scene that only could have been scripted by the world’s foremost authority on romance.

Not bloody likely.

I have to admit, the argument I was presented with wasn’t totally wrong. Christine argued that “You never have enough money to have a baby...” and in a way, she was right. It’s not like I didn’t WANT children, I just thought I (and we together) needed more time. I also wanted to have more than our present total in the bank account. A dollar thirteen cents wasn’t going to get us a nice highchair, that’s for sure.

Oh sure, you think I’m exaggerating, but I’m not. I still have the bank statement. I save it to remember the days that I had a whole dollar plus in my bank account.

Anyway, whenever I’m asked what it feels like to be a father, I remember a time I sat down with my first born son, Patrick, to discuss a few worries I had.

“Patrick,” I said settling down on the living room couch with him. “I think you’ve come to the age where we should discuss a few things. I’m concerned with the type of things available to kids via the internet and television and want to explain my feelings with you.”

Patrick looked put-out upon, but sat there and let me continue.

“The world can be a scary place and there are a lot of images and media that you just aren’t ready for. As your father, I feel it’s my place to protect you from them until you’re a bit older and able to make decisions about whether or not you wish to view or experience these things.”

He just stared at me, not saying anything. I went on.

“It’s not that all of these things are wrong, it’s just that you aren’t of the right age yet to be able to filter out the right messages from the wrong ones.”Pat titled his head a bit, still staring at me. He leaned back into the couch and rolled his eyes. I decided to finish up.

“In time you’ll be able to make your own decisions, I just felt you should know about why I’m making this decision for you at this time in your life. Ok?”

Pat laughed and threw his pacifier at my head. He was only ten months old at the time. All in all I thought it was a successful conversation.

My wife was watching, amused from the doorway.

“Very sweet thought,” she said, not trying to hide her smile. “…but I think a little premature seeing that he hasn’t even started walking yet… don’t you think?”

What the hell did I know? I would have looked up “Meaningful conversations and when to have them” in the instruction booklet, but dammit, I didn’t get one. That was my biggest complaint when my son was born. Was I taken aside and filled in on the inner secrets of parenthood? No. Was I given a handbook that covers kids from birth till the day they get a real job and stop shoving their dirty underwear into the VCR? No.

Instead, I was handed a paper suit to wear and about 30 seconds after my son was born, they plopped him in my arms and sent me down the hall. I looked up at the nurse… just what the heck was supposed to do? I looked at Pat… he looked at me… and burst out hysterical crying.
Him I mean… not me.

Although it wouldn’t have been too much of a stretch for me to follow him.

I walked down back into the room my wife had been in during the course of 20 hours of blistful labor. (At one point she told the doctor to get “your fucking hands off” her and told me that it was “all your fault” and I was “never touching me again.” She also discovered how tasty ice chips are when you’ve gone hours without eating or drinking.) I sat down into the chair next to the bed and figured I would calm my newborn son with some soft soothing singing.

Suddenly my mind went blank. I needed a soft soothing song. None would come to mind. In the space of 15 seconds a myriad of songs rushed through my head… I was like a walking advertisement for Lyrics.com… then suddenly what came out was Collective Soul.

Ok, so not exactly the first choice of singing children to sleep… but it could have been worse. Somehow I don’t know how well “Inagaddadevida” would have gone over…

The scary thing was… he stopped crying. He looked up and me with his look that basically said “Who the hell are you and where the hell am I and why the hell is it so cold out here and where the hell is my little warm mini-swimming pool I’ve been hanging out in for the last 9 months?”

I looked back and shrugged. Wouldn’t be the last time he would stump me, just the first.
“Don’t look at me kid,” I told him. “I pretty much just got here myself.”

He gave me a sympathetic look (or was is dismay? It’s so hard to tell the difference when the baby is only about 12 and a half minutes old) and suddenly realized he hadn’t finished his hysterical crying fit. He must have realized he’d be doing a lot of it over the years and wanted to get started on practice and hard training for it as early as possible. So the crying resumed, I picked another song (Pearl Jam and The Police didn’t help too much) and I realized that I needed a little help in knowing just what the heck I was going to have to do to avoid having Patrick turn out to get his head stuck in the microwave or kidnapping Penguins or what not. I needed a little booklet that would cover years One through... oh I don’t know… Twenty-Seven?

Afterwards, when they had taken him to get some sleep and my wife had also turned in for the night, I asked the nurse about the instruction booklet. I wanted to bring it home right away and get a head start on reading before picking them both up the next day. The nurse laughed and gave me a cup of water.

I was gypped.