I didn’t know it at the time, but seventeen years ago today was the last day of my childhood. After work that day I stopped at a pub near the train station with two buddies from the trading floor.
One of the guys, a witty Irish kid from the Southside pointed at my belongings sitting in front of me on the bar.
“You see how simple your life is Jumbo?” pointing to the bar.
“You have a cellphone, sunglasses and keys……”
“Pretty soon when you leave the house you’ll have a diaper bag, bottles, towels, binkies and all the rest of dat shit that comes along with your first baby… cherish the simple life while it’s here, because when dat baby comes, you’ll be bubble wrapping your house and carrying a shit ton of stuff wherever you go.”
That was the most accurate prediction of fatherhood given to me…. and from the moment my wife became pregnant I received quite a bit of advice.
The place was Irish Times and the professor was Eddie “Fugging” Farnan. Sitting with us in agreement was another father, Michael Grace. That was the last day that I sat in a bar with my friends without worrying about a Shepkid.
I still thought I had a little time left because this kid wasn’t due until the first of September. I finished my Guinness and went home to fix dinner for my pregnant wife.
Later that night I laid in bed next to the most beautiful woman in the world. Though she was miserable, she glowed with life. Her belly was laying up on the small of my back giving me a massage with little kicks from the baby. I was listening to that Kate Bush song on my iPod. The one from the John Hughes movie, “She’s having a Baby.”
“I should be crying but I just can't let it show,
I should be hoping but I can't stop thinking,
Of all the things I should've said
That I never said…
All the things we should've done
Though we never did…
All the things I should've given
But I didn't…
Oh, darling, make it go
Make it go away.”
That was the last night of my childhood. The next day I became a man for the first time. The day that I became a father was the day I gave away the selfishness of my adolescence. I was forty fucking years old!
The next day my wife’s water broke while she was on her lunch break. Fortunately, she was with her Nana and mom. They rushed her to the hospital and called me at work.
My first child was going to be a couple weeks early. I jumped on the next Metra and headed to fatherhood. I sat on that train by myself thinking about the advice I received the day before.
For the last part of that decade and the beginning of the next one, I would be carrying a baby car seat everywhere I went.
Everywhere!
I still get tears in my eyes when I hear “This Woman’s Work.” It reminds me of the beauty my pregnant wife showed and the gift of life she gave me.
Seventeen years later and I don’t carry a binky with me anymore. I carry bags of groceries to feed my baby who is now a man child.
The person that hates me the most gave me the biggest gift of love. Three of them as a matter of fact.
Maybe I should call Farnan and Grace and meet them for a pint and celebrate our seventeenth anniversary?
To this day I still think of that advice when my keys, sunglasses and phone are sitting on a bar.
It is Tuesday morning and I have to go make a lunch for the person who showed up a couple weeks early back in 2006.
Enjoy Two for Tuesday…. Maybe XRT will play a couple Kate Bush songs today?
