Fatherhood the Blog - Halftime

Yes, ladies and gentlemen. We have officially reached the point of Margaret's pregnancy where we take a short breather and give one another a pep talk as a dusty old band of bones that were last popular before any participants (either in this pregnancy or on an NFL team) were born performs a predictable medley of their greatest hits and everyone refills on nachos and cocktail wieners. They say (and by they, I mean witch doctors) that the average pregnancy is 40 weeks long. We're 20 weeks along. Pull out your calculators kids, and, like Mr. Hudson in high school math always said - "Zzzzz" (translated: double check your work). Twenty weeks is half way there.

             What does that mean? It means a lot of things, and those things are often contradictory. It means that this pregnancy is closer to over than ever before. It means that we've crested the top of the hill and, like every good roller coaster rider, are beginning to hurtle downward with a mix of glee and terror. It also means that we have as long left in this pregnancy as we've already experienced so far, and it seems like Mag has been pregnant forever. Pregnancy is a big change. It's a change in the way one thinks, and it's a change in the way one lives, but I can only assume it's nothing compared to actually having the child. That's when life will really change. That's when I'll really get scared. I honestly cannot imagine having a child. I spend a lot of time dedicating my always over active imagination to this one particular subject, and while I can imagine many instances and situations (both good and bad) of me being in the role of father, and having a delightful little son next to me, it's impossible to actually imagine all the small daily ways life will change once there's a non-self-sufficient human being permanently residing in my house. Though I realize that I cannot imagine it, and though I understand that there's no way to understand it before experiencing it, it doesn't mean that I'm more prepared to live the life that will soon be my very own.

     However, if there is one thing that mankind has always been proficient at, it's tracking the every move of Kim Kardashian. Also, it's creating menial tasks to fulfill the reptile part of our brain in order to keep the more advanced, civilized part of our mind from running rampant and sliding down every pathway and side trail exploring all possibilities in a manner that will eventually cripple our every day life. This is all to say that we've been doing a lot of work on the nursery. Mag, despite repeated warnings from people who evidently know nothing, repainted a chest of drawers (while in the open air of our deck) for our little boy. The actually body is dark brown, while the drawers themselves are light brown. I'm working on a set of stencils which we'll use to paint a boat, plane, and something else on the drawers. I also replaced all of the chest of drawer handles with the pewter airplane handles that Mag bought. This was such a pain in the ass. Seriously, I've never seen such a simple task complicated so thoroughly. First of all, the screws for the handles were slightly too long for the thickness of the drawers. This means that it was impossible for the handles to screw on tightly enough. The solution seemed simple enough so I wrote out a list of things I needed, measured items out, wrote down specific numbers I don't even understand (T25 head?), and even drew out lines and shapes on my list. Then I headed to the one place that always makes me feel the most uncomfortable and insufficient. No, not a Catholic wedding. No, not Victoria's Secret. No, not an African-American drinking establishment. The little shop of over exuberant manhood - Home Depot.

              I seriously spent like 45 minutes in this store, and everything I need was on one aisle. I needed several different sizes of screws, and one screw bit. I brought a little pouch with different items to compare with the things I was buying and that, along with my obsessive-compulsively detailed list, made me think that all of this was going to be simple. Surprise - it wasn't. Home Depot has a clever little panel with a lot of screw holes in it. You screw your bolt (that you remembered to bring from home) into whichever hole it fits and voila! you now know which size screw, or bolt, or nut, you need. Of course, things went wrong. After figuring out my first few items I realized that the airplane handle wouldn't unscrew from it's bolt by hand. I had to find the screwdriver section and use one of the models to get the pieces apart. Once I finally returned home  I was treated to the revelation that the screws I had bought wouldn't quite fit into the airplane handles. I went to ACE Hardware (which is much closer than Home Depot) and bought a bunch of small $0.09 washers (which had been my original idea to begin with) and slid them on the bolts and that made them long enough to screw on all the handles. HOORAY.

            Mag took our guest bed to her parents' house on Tuesday evening (while myself, my four brothers, my brother-in-law, and my father were witnessing a live buttkicking at Turner Field. (I want to record this for posterity real quick. I asked my littlest brother, Levi [who was at his first MLB game], "Do you want to see a home run?" when Jason Heyward was up to bat. He said he did, so I said, "Okay, watch that State Farm sign right there. He's about to hit a ball right over it." Heyward got on base, Chipper got out, and then McCann hit a home run - exactly about the State Farm sign. Levi wasn't watching, of course.)). She traded that bed for the crib that is stored at her parents, and also bought a changing table while she was in Columbus. That, the crib, the newly painted dresser, and the kid toys we already got, makes our guest room really begin to resemble a baby's room. We have a good ways to go in the room, of course, but we still have a good ways to go in the pregnancy.

                So, on Father's Day I (famously) commanded Flipper to kick for me. He (nearly as famously) refused. He definitely understands English, as he'll occasionally punctuate something Mag or I say with a hearty bout of kicking and punching. On Friday Mag was lounging in our beautiful little living room, watching the afternoon sun play through the cherry trees in our front yard and over the pages of her supremely nerdy book. Flipper started kicking, and she called me over, grasped my hand, and dug it in to her stomach, with far more pressure than I myself would ever dare to exert. "Feel that?" she asked, but I didn't. I could feel her heart beating (that's how hard my hand was pushing in) but nothing else. I'd imagine a thousand tiny kicks, but I didn't say anything about them, since I didn't want to look stupid when she told me he hadn't actually kicked.  Suddenly I felt a little flutter - something that felt like a strong, extra, heartbeat. My eyes neatly popped out of my head and rolled down Margaret's swollen stomach, careening down the armchair and bouncing across the floor then skittering under the coffee table. "Did he just - ?" I asked. And, "Yes," of course, she replied. It was a small, quick, kick (though I've only felt him kick once I already understand Fetus Kick Language and his kick, interpreted into spoken word, means, "I'm here, okay? Now leave me alone.") but I felt it unmistakably. I'm sure I'll feel it much more in the coming weeks, and months, but I suppose the first time you ever feel your child move is a pretty important time. It felt like it, anyway.

              I have a little journal I've been keeping for Flip, writing down my innermost thoughts and special moments of the pregnancy. I give him bits of advice when they come to me, and tell him historical details about things that are going on (in case he wants to double check my memory against whatever form the Internet has taken in 2027). I was thinking about that today, actually. My great grandfather was born in 1910 and died just a few years ago. It's completely mind blowing to attempt and consider how much the world has changed since his birth. My grandparents were born like in the 1930s or something. People barely had cars! My parents were born in the late 50s-early 60s. I can identify with them quite easily, but then when you really think about all the things invented since their childhood - like cable television and VHS and a completely different worldview of ourselves and the rest of Earth, it's almost like they were born in some history book somewhere. The Internet didn't exist when I was born. CDs didn't exist, and they're nearly obsolete. I can't even imagine the kind of world my son will come of age in, and all of the things he will see in his lifetime. I already try and look back at my childhood through his eyes, and wonder what are the little details about it that will make him think I'm super old. What are the things that I consider normal that he won't even be able to imagine? I was watching the famous Braves vs. Padres fight(s) from back in 1984 and I had to sit back and say, "This was really the style when I was born? These are real people and not just horrible, horrible actors?" That will be Flipper one day, talking about 2011. That's just creepy.