So This Is Dad Life

Thoughts on fatherhood after the first week.

“The Artist’s Father, Reading L’Evenement” Paul Cezanne, 1866

As I write this there is a tiny human sleeping next to me. Even as she rests she’s expressive. I imbue every bat of an eye, scrunch of the face, and stretch of an arm or leg with meaning. Is she hungry? Is she uncomfortable? Is she dreaming? A combination of all three? So far I think it tends the be the latter. Do newborns dream? Add that to the hundreds of other questions I ask the internet everyday. It occurs to me that my days are now to be filled with more questions than answers. How am I remotely going to keep up once she starts being able to ask questions of her own? Of course I already know I won’t be able to, keep up that is. If the past week since my firstborn joined the party has taught me anything it’s that just doing your best minute to minute is all you can do. The pendulum of the day swings wildly between wonder and wondering. There are flurries of activity and then…peace.

Stolen moments like this, where I can jot down some thoughts, feel much more precious than before she arrived. Being busy with “real work” and grabbing time to write something here was a pleasant exercise, now it’s something I really treasure. It would be an understatement to say that my awareness of the passage of time is heightened, that every action and activity is more considered, and yet it’s perfectly clear that nothing really matters other than her well being. In that sense becoming a parent is quite liberating. As I wrote at the outset of the year, “if it’s not a hell yes, then it’s a fuck no”. There may be no better reinforcement for adhering to that principle than being a parent.

The flip side of being able to make clear cut choices is the need to be able to just roll with whatever comes your way. Day to day, hour to hour, minute to minute, I have been doing my damndest to be fluid. I’m generally pretty go with the flow, I only get bent out of shape when I’m roped into being part of a shit plan. The nice thing about a newborn is there’s no point in having a plan, it’s going to get thrown out anyway. Preparation on the other hand, that’s key. My wife excels at preparation, I excel at adapting to a given situation, with our powers combined we’re managing to get anywhere from 6-8 hours of sleep…so far. If we can keep this up for at least another 2 weeks, we may have a shot at reaching the all important 3-4 week milestone where early sleep training can begin without excessive loss of sanity on our part. I’m optimistic, but we’ll see.

What’s been great about getting a relatively normal amount of sleep in the early going is still maintaining enough brain power to do this, keep working on opening a physical space in Nashville(more on that soon) and work on other contracted writing projects. The kid takes up a lot of mental space, but not all of it. There’s still plenty of room in there for denim, boots, vinyl, motorcycles, cars, cameras, coffee, books, podcasts, watches, jackets, snowboards, furniture and roadtrips. In short, I’m still me, just me with a daughter. Laugh if you want, but I’ve seen more than a few friends become a parent and everything else goes out the window. The ones whose approach I respect have managed to maintain their identity and incorporate being a mother or father into that, rather than change themselves altogether. Again, we’ll see how it goes as the weeks turn to months and months turn to years.

For now, I’m thinking about the strategy for a first wash of the 4 pairs of raw denim I’ve been breaking in since October, just in between feeds, burping sessions and diaper changes instead of whenever I damn well please. It’s her world now, I’m just living in it.

Cheers-AM

Baby C doesn’t show her face on the internet.

That’s All Ya’ll!