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Fatherhood, the journey of a lifetime
by Jeff Mullin, Enid News & Eagle
WINNING COLUMN - June 2004
"I felt something impossible for me to explain in words. Then when they took her away, it hit me. I got scared all over again and began to feel giddy. Then it came to me—I was a father."
—Nat King Cole
For nine months it all seemed like some great adventure.
Your wife had the worst of it, of course, but it's not like you didn't have to suffer, too. There were all those childbirth classes, having to go haul all those gifts back from the baby showers and that 3 a.m. run to the grocery store for salsa and stewed prunes.
You even had to give up golf a couple of Saturdays to help paint the nursery.
But overall it was kind of cool, like getting ready for a party, or a long trip. Some of your friends even started calling you "Dad." Crazy, huh?
Then, finally, it's time. You have talked about and prepared for this moment for months, but everything seems to be happening faster than you expected.
She is in so much pain. You knew there would be pain, but you didn't anticipate this. You also never thought you'd hear such words coming out her mouth.
The delivery room is a somewhat surreal scene, with everyone wearing gowns and masks. You can't believe you're actually standing here, watching this. Suddenly the room starts to spin and someone offers you a chair. You sit, gratefully, when all at once the doctor says, "It's a boy," and you hear a gasping, rasping cry, a brand new person's first hello to the world.
You accept congratulations and stand to kiss your wife, who is laughing and crying all at once. Then you start to do the same.
Then the baby is cleaned and wrapped in a cloth and is laid in your wife's arms. After a time, she looks at you with tired eyes and says, "Do you want to hold your son?"
So she hands him to you and you get weak in the knees again and have to sit. You cradle this wee bundle of life like he was a piece of priceless porcelain, one that would crack if you so much as breathed on it wrong.
All at once you're light-headed again, and you realize it's because you've been holding your breath since you took him in your arms.
As your head clears, your mind begins to race. It dawns on you that you hold in your hands the greatest responsibility you will ever face in this life. You helped bring this life into the world, and you will spend the rest of your existence taking care of him, protecting him, educating him, nurturing him and worrying about him.
Oh yeah, worrying. You'll do plenty of that. You'll worry when he cries at night, when he spits out his strained peas, when he bumps his head on the coffee table, when he falls off his tricycle and skins his knee, when he rides his bike for the first time without training wheels, when he goes to school, when he makes the football team, when he goes to his first dance, when he has his first date, when he gets his driver's license, when he graduates from high school and when he goes away to college. And then you'll worry some more.
And what if he doesn't go to college? What if he goes into the military, and we're still at war and he gets sent overseas? Then he begins to fuss, and it brings you back to the present. You wonder what it means, whether or not you're hurting him.
You begin to think of all that being a father, rather than simply fathering a child, really means. He's going to follow you around like a smell in a few years, asking a million questions. He's going to want to know why the sky's blue and the dirt's brown and why Mommy's face is soft and smooth and why yours is so rough, especially on Saturdays.
You'll have to teach him to play baseball and to fish. You'll have to tech him how to be polite, to share his toys and not to hit anyone, especially girls.
You'll have to warn him about drugs and alcohol and bad people who want to take advantage of him.
You begin to fret, worried you won't be up to the task. Then you look at your wife and the love in her eyes is spilling out all over the room. And your boy makes a noise, and you think that expression on his face just might be a slight smile, or a gas-induced grimace, you're not quite sure.
But your heart swells and your face splits in a silly grin and you make a vow before God and everybody you're going to be the best father there ever was.
And you know something, if you cherish him his whole life as much as you do at this moment, you'll live up to that vow.
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