So a few people have said, "your blog for Ollie is great, but we want to know what you think about being a parent, not just what he thinks about being a baby." I've resisted posting my thoughts, just because I was afraid they weren't new or insightful. Y'know, "my baby's cute," "I love him," not exactly ground-breaking material.
But, I do see the value in recording some of these thoughts, if not for posterity, then for myself. What's life with Ollie like?
While I know it's a radical departure and a complete change in every aspect of my life, it doesn't really feel that way. It feels more like another puzzle piece slipping into place, rather than a boulder dropped in a lake. It's the same way I felt when Jess moved in, or when we moved to Minneapolis -- there's this process of turning my life into what it's supposed to be, not giving up what it was. Caring for Ollie is sometimes easy, sometimes hard, but it always feels exactly right. Like there *should* be challenges in my life, there *should* be responsibilities, and frustrations, there *should* be this purpose. Jess filled a void that I didn't know was there until I met her, and so did Ollie -- he made one more set of restless, empty feelings go away.
That's probably why for the most part I don't reflect on the ongoing miracle of him. It's not often that I step back and go, "this is my son. He has half of my DNA. He went from an embryo to this little person who can almost stand up and talk. This is part of me, and part of Jess, and yet totally his own person." When I do think that, it blows my mind, of course, but for the most part I'm just enjoying his company.
There are rare moments when the whole truth of the matter threatens to burst forth and make me dissolve into happy tears, though. Last night, Jess read Ollie a few books and got him sufficiently sleepy that it was time to put him to bed. I cradled him in my arms and sang him a lullaby that my grandmother used to sing to me. It goes, "close your sleepy eyes, my little buckaroo, while the light of western skies is shining down on you . . ." When I hit the next verse, a lump rose in my throat and my eyes filled with tears: "don't you realize, my little buckaroo, that t'was from the little acorn that the oak tree grew / and remember that your dad was once a kid like you . . ."
I had a brief flash of my father, about my age, holding me in his arms and singing that song. Then of his father, about my age, holding my infant father in his arms and singing. Then flash forward to Ollie, 25 years old, holding his baby son and feeling that same connection to all the fathers and sons that came before him. It made me think of a kinetoscope, an ever-repeating loop -- the father cradles the son, the son grows up and become a father who cradles his son.
Now I can see that a father is not some different kind of person -- a different species, like I thought when I was a kid. A father is no more or less than a son, imbued with no special knowledge save that he has become part of that recursive loop, doing his best to transmit the earth-shaking love he feels by rocking his son to sleep.
And remember that your dad is still a kid like you . . .
