Eight Days

When your wife is going to have a baby in eight days people tend to ask you crazy shi- like, "Are you nervous?" To which I respond, without fail, "what the hell do I have to be nervous about? Have you seen a video of labor, that shi- is intense. I don't think I'm nervous at all, but if I was..." at this point my interlocutor generally turns away in what can be called mild disgust or disdain. Sometimes I have to ask them to clarify which of the two they are trying to display.

Anyhow, just to head off any further questions, I am way too uninformed to be nervous about this thing. The closest I've come to taking care of an infant is playing dolls with a few little girls back in the day when I used to teach pre-school. I'm pretty sure the dolls are just like quieter and creepier versions of babies. I've not changed a diaper in my life. I have stood by at least a handful of times while others did it and secretly critiqued them for not doing it correctly. By correctly I mean, extraordinarily quickly. As far as I'm concerned you're just trying to get in and get out without getting peed on. I pretty much use that as a motto for most things in my life.

When you're eight days from having a kid it's almost like being months from having a kid. I mean, you've gradually been accumulating things for the past few months, but, in general, until you have the kid the whole ordeal is a supposition, a philosophical consideration. However, a baby crying at 2 A.M. or pooping twelve times a day isn't as much a philosophical consideration so much as a concrete fact. However, until that concrete fact is a living and breathing ball of baby it's hard to imagine what it will be like when things are different. I realize that most human beings in history have on one or the other side of this equation, but it doesn't make it any more explicable to me. I've never had to give a baby a bath in the kitchen sink. Apparently this will become old hat.

I guess if a person caught me in the right mood I might admit to being a little bit nervous. I mean, babies are small and fragile things that shouldn't be dropped, but are really easy to carry as footballs. This seems like a danger. In general though, I am feeling as stated above, too ignorant about this whole process to be particularly nervous. Occasionally I get nervous about the myriad of decisions that are required in order to be a functioning adult, and I vaguely recall the awful intensity of being in my early teens, but these sorts of things are very far away for our little girl. I suppose in the upcoming weeks the best thing that we'll be able to offer her is just love and care, and we won't even worry what her political views are or whether she'll be the valedictorian in her class.

Although, in truth, the two are related, I'm guessing. When you lavish that much love and attention on something the expectations, not in a bad parent way, are probably lifted pretty damn high, in the same way that you wouldn't want someone to criticize anything that you've worked very hard to create. And let's not even touch the implications of the whole "create" thing, as nature vs. nurture always turns out to be nature w/ nurture.

I'm holding off on being nervous and excited because I think I'll have enough of that in my future. For the time being I'm going with that great old poet Thomas Gray ignorance is bliss.


Thomas Gray


To each his sufferings: all are men,
Condemned alike to groan;
The tender for another's pain,
The unfeeling for his own.
Yet ah! why should they know their fate?
Since sorrow never comes too late,
And happiness too swiftly flies.
Thought would destroy their paradise.
No more; where ignorance is bliss,
'Tis folly to be wise.