Father's Day

So first of all, I've been meaning to write a guest post on Kate's blog for ages. But, I mean, it's intimidating! I can rattle off 800 words about Twitter at the drop of a hat (proof) but when it comes to writing about the stuff that really matters— not the work stuff but the home stuff, the stuff people that don't really know us don't know— I freeze up.

You can't blame me; my wife is an amazing writer. Following this blog myself has given me yet another window into the world she's living in; we spend a lot of time together, so I'm usually up on the facts (although the calendar thing was a surprise to me). But to see how she frames it for you, the reader— how she turns an experience that, holy crap, has got to be essentially unwriteable, into lucid, engaging, interesting writing, that's a miracle to me. If you're a regular reader of this weblog, you know that she's got two modes: sometimes she's chatty and dishy and practical about pregnancy and motherhood, and other times she lets herself go and pours out pure magic, streams of consciousness, Web literature. The fact that she is both of these ways in person too is why I love her.

Anyway— so here we are, Father's Day, on the verge of Part Two of both our lives, and I can't get out of writing on this thing any longer. So here are a couple of notes from, um, a dad's perspective.

For Kate, her pregnancy is about our daughter. For me, it's about Kate. That's a weird thing to say, but it seems right. Obviously Kate's the one with the physical connection; pardon the obvious statement, but she is growing a new person inside her. I can't wait for Ivy to be born; especially as the day gets closer, the feeling gets bigger and bigger. But it's a theoretical feeling, kind of. I know this new thing is coming, and I'm ready for it, but I have no sense of what it's going to feel like.

(This doesn't bother me. It seems like a lot of literature for "first-time dads" is all about how we have to be prepared to be a sidekick in the early child development phase, or to deal with pregnancy being more about the mother and child than it is the father. But, I mean, that's obvious, right? My time will come.)

What I do know is that this process has profoundly affected how I see, and feel about, Kate.

We've known we wanted kids for a long time. (Kate made up the name Ivy Cat in a text message in 2005.) But we haven't really known what that meant. Saying "I want to have a child with you" is basically the same thing as saying "I want to spend my life with you," just a little more graphic. We've known for a while now that we wanted to spend our lives together, so talking about kids was just a natural extension of that expression.

But now it's different. Over the last nine months I have watched Kate become a mother— and the amazing thing is, she's become a mother without losing any of the sweet, funny, dorky, juvenile, raucous things that I liked about her in the first place. Watching her transform both physically and— metaphysically?— has been a transformative process for me as well. It's her that's turning me into a father— not the child we're about to have. We're parents already. And shit, we are going to be such awesome parents!

It's Father's Day, and I found myself celebrating it in some pretty conventional ways. Kate cooked bacon (not easy for her), I used power tools, read the Sunday paper. But what we're really celebrating, I suppose, is the end of non-fatherly concerns; one of the last days where I don't have to worry about a single thing except my damn self. (Which is worry enough, but hey, that's a different post, if not a different blog.) The funny thing about it is that the process of becoming a father— which absolutely begins the day you find out she's pregnant— has already led me to a place where selfishness feels kind of silly. Unnecessary.

I mean, sure. Ask me if I'm feeling selfish once I'm knee deep in shitty diapers. I might be. But for now, in this magic place, basically 99% of the way towards fatherhood, I feel much more like part of a thing than I ever have before.

And now that I've written on her blog, I'm going to go play her a song.