CHILD IS FATHER TO THE MAN
I had never given any thought to having children but as our marriage continued to disintegrate, L and I, decided a baby might help bring us back together, give us something to align on. This sounded fine to me. I figured we’d have sex more often which sounded like a good idea to me. With or without love, sex was one thing I was always ready to enjoy. Men are like that; uh-huh.
We’d been married for just two years when our relationship began ailing. I was thirty-eight and Lwas twenty-eight; no one was getting younger so we started trying. Periods were charted and once a month we’d have a brief frenzy of lustful activity for a few fertile days.
Several unsuccessful years later, after discovering that my production wasn’t the problem, thank God, the doctor introduced fertility drugs into the equation. Even so we remained barren for a couple years longer. Finally after nearly seven years Lill became pregnant. It was exciting, it was bonding, it made us hopeful. Three months later the sonogram revealed that the fetus aborted. I remember feeling disconnected from the event, disconnected from my feelings. L however, was devastated. We stood in the parking lot outside the hospital and I held her. I wasn’t sad, nor did I feel compassion for L. I realized then that I hadn’t really felt much of anything for a long while.
After the miscarriage L put on a few pounds. We were later informed that this increased our chances of getting pregnant again and three months later we did.
Nine months down the road as we watched some lame Stephen King made for T.V. film L said, “I think it’s happening”. We raced to the hospital. The doctor that had guided and supported us all along was out of town on vacation. This information increased Lill’s prebirthing anxiety significantly. An assistant night shift nurse checked things out and told us it wasn’t time. We went home only to return a few days later when the real contractions began.
Lill was determined to give this child a natural birth and so declined any drugs or epidural. We walked the halls all night and most of the day. An unfamiliar doctor assigned to us examined L and suggested that we break her water to speed things up. Exhausted and afraid she acquiesced and moments after her water broke she looked at me and said, “I want that epidural”. Then she yelled, “now!”
It was scary being present and witnessing all that pain and feeling powerless to do anything about it. Time crept by and progress was made very slowly. The epidural fell out three times before the shift changed and finally a capable anesthesiologist placed it properly. The doctor returned at one point and told us that if Lill couldn’t push the baby out soon she’d have to have a cesarean. The nurse and I were instructed to put our weight on either side of Lill’s belly and lean in when the next set of contractions hit. The doctor placed what looked like a toilet plunger suctioned onto the crown of the baby’s head. I looked at the nurse and when Lill started pushing she nodded her head we both leaned in. I glimpsed something long, thin and wiggly whizz by my peripheral vision. Awestruck, I entered a fatherly trance. I watched this new life squirming in the nurse’s arms; I couldn’t take my eyes off the newborn and the concluding procedures while my exhausted wife suffered the final insult following a twenty-eight hour delivery-the episiotomy. The overwhelming love and affection I was feeling for the baby was something entirely new for me; it was unconditional and would remain so.
Six months later and contrary to the popular myth that one cannot get pregnant while nursing, Benjamin was conceived the very first time we had sex since Sam’s delivery. The universe works in mysterious ways. Looking back I was convinced that some higher power knew I wasn’t ready for fatherhood prior to when it happened. I was too immature, too self-centered and I’m sure that had a child arrived any sooner I would have fled. Our family joke was this; seven years for the first child-seven minutes for the second one.
L and I’d been watching Appollo 13 at a movie theater when Sam’s brother Ben began his own launch. In contrast to Sammys twenty-eight hour delivery session, Benny popped out fast and furious, red-faced and fists clenched. The two boys grew to become close loving brothers; something I’d never had with my own older brother. It brought me a joy that has been with me ever since. I miss these guys today as they are both through with college and stumbling into self-sufficiency. My support now for them is mostly financial and I miss those humble beginnings falling asleep on the lazy boy with a babe or two in my arms. I miss cheering them on at their baseball games. I miss them hiding behind the front door, jumping out and attacking me upon my return home from work. If not for my parenting experience I would never have begun to grow up.
Near the end of the sixties a popular band, “Blood Sweat and Tears,” borrowed a line I later learned was from the Bible and they used it as the title of their album-Child is Father to the Man. I never understood the phrase back then but it is crystal clear to me now.
