One Year Into Fatherhood

(The actual date is this Sunday, but man, no one reads blogs on the weekend.)

The hardest part of being a dad so far is that in dealing with Eddy, I need to remember that I am trying to handle what amounts to the purest embodiment of the id: an infant. As Kyle Reese said, when describing a Terminator, “It can’t be bargained with. It can’t be reasoned with. It doesn’t feel pity, or remorse, or fear. And it absolutely will not stop, ever, until you are dead.”

Those last five words are open for debate and really depend on how good a job I do as a parent in crafting his superego.

There are days when being a dad drives me a little batty — but for the most part, I absolutely love it. It’s like that first moment out the door of a plane, when you’re arcing away and you can see the aircraft falling away from you. It’s terrifying, it’s heartbreaking, and it’s exhilarating all in the same little lump of Planck time, and then the emotion of the moment is filtered out and at the forefront of my brain.

I’ve got this little human that I am ultimately responsible for who is developing his own little personality and ideas about the world, and I have to help him craft that. It’s crazy. It’s the ultimate hack — how do I turn this little guy into a person of worth, a person that will be a good friend, who will do the right thing, who will be confident and strong and brave, when the slightest misstep, the smallest bug in the code can send him careening off into entirely the wrong direction?

It’s amazing. It’s scary. It’s love. And I wouldn’t trade it for anything.

Leave a Comment

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.