Celebrating a Half-Birthday is Kind of Corny Unless it’s Your Daughter’s
Thursday, December 10th, 2009It’s been six months now that I’ve been an official father and it’s been quite different.
Now, to be fair, I had been a “Daddio” before. During my zoot suit wearing years (1994-2008). And a lady used to call me “Pops” a few years back in the play we were in together where I played a character named “Pops.” And once someone called me “Padre,” but I think that’s because I was lying in the middle of a tennis court dressed as a priest with a fake mustache. This was many, many Octobers ago.
But, man. A father.
So, let’s just get it out of the way and say that, as her father, Veronica is the cutest and smartest baby in the world. Hands down. Hands up. And then hands down again. Trace your one hand with a pencil and take it away. Gussy it up and you’ve got yourself a turkey. That turkey of yours has .00000000012% of Veronica’s cuteness (but sadly their neck stuff is practically identical). In fact, the Baby Einstein people called last week to see if they could use her likeness on their DVD covers and letter bombs, and we had to cordially decline. Contractual conflicts with the Gerber crowd. She’s so adorable, when I change her diapers I find rainbows and kittens wearing ski hats.
But. Life. Has. Changed.
Dramatically.
No more Tupperware parties. No more nights spent working on my rubber-band orchestral band. No more pirating it up in Somalia. Almost all of my free time is gone. Claire has even less, bless her heart and nipples.
I no longer worry or care about new music, new movies, new moons. My excitement is now completely tethered to Veronica’s evolution. When she was born June 10th, I emailed my entire address book a GIF of an exploding cigar. When she rolled over for the first time, I cracked my knuckles without even moving my fingers. When she started recognizing me with squeals and nose bubbles when I walked into a room, I forced the cats to kiss each other. And this past month, not only has she rolled from her back to her front, gotten her first tooth, tasted her first solids and has been able to stay seated for long periods of time, but she now clasps her arms around my neck when I pick her up, giving me a kind of satisfaction I only used to get when I saw a knee-high “Buy 5 for $5″ deal on Chef Boyardee Mini Ravioli.
She makes me very happy.
And I’m as proud as a Tiger Woods mistress.
I’ve heard from people, and have repeated it many more times than I probably should have, that babies come out looking like their fathers so that the man is convinced that the child is his. So he doesn’t toss it aside or refurbish it as a siren for the top of his sedan. Veronica definitely had some of my features, but she looked like Claire in the very beginning, which was pretty cool with me. But then Veronica magically morphed into my doppelganger and it was like I was a banished Princess who had never seen her reflection in a lake before, the two of us giggling and miming each other while trees lost their leaves behind us. Then she got a few months older and went back to looking like my beautiful wife, Claire, but with my eye sockets. Still a cute combination. I often wonder what a 14-year-old Veronica will look like. And which of her parents she will hate more.
(I have a feeling Claire is over there on the left writing some really sweet things about our little family. About her amazing relationship with Veronica. About her own mother. About me, even. I’m in love with her for those reasons. For her ability to head this family, to know what V should have and should not have. For her willingness to adapt to our new life. For how much love she spills onto our daughter. And I hope she loves me for how serious I can be with our daughter at home, and how I can feel no shame for bringing up Tiger Woods’ whores in an essay about my daughter’s six-month-old birthday.)
It’s another six months, plus probably another six months, minus maybe three months, until Veronica speaks. And when that happens, and she calls me Daddio, Padre, Pops, Dr. Cool, Dad, Da-Da or Cat, I’ll lock myself in the bathroom closet and weep. I’ll wilt like an Andre Agassi toupee. And I’ll try to costume my emotions by writing a thinly veiled humor piece about what it’s like to be a father.
Dear Veronica,
Today you are six months old. Half a year! And you’re healthy and thriving and more beautiful every day.
I remember back when I was in my prenatal yoga class how my teacher Dee used to encourage us to work on our posture. She said that once our babies arrived we would be spending all our time looking down at them, and straining our necks.
Pah, I thought. I couldn’t imagine wanting to stare at a baby all the time, even my own. But boy was she right. I don’t know that I’ve ever looked at another person as much as I’ve looked at you. Your eyelashes, your soft downy head, those apple cheeks and your soft, smooth lips.
There was a period a couple of months ago when I couldn’t stop revisiting your birth. I guess after getting to know you for a while, and after completely falling in love with you, I couldn’t believe that it was YOU in my belly all those months, especially since I was so afraid of who you might be (namely a boy).
I realized that it’s also been impossible to see you change. Each you that you are is the you that I know, and so when I look back on photos of you just after you were born, I can hardly comprehend how you’ve so swiftly become the robust and golden girl you are right now.
I hated being a parent at first. Well, there was that dreamy, hormone-fueled first couple of weeks in which all of us were in awe of each other. And then I realized that you were here to stay. And that your primary occupation would be to keep me from sleeping, or enjoying languid meals (and showers), to completely stop me from spending time by myself, to limit my drinking to only one glass or so of wine, and to teach me how to snap at your father on a regular basis (poor Greg).
And then somehow we turned that corner. Either you lightened up on a few of those things, or I just got used to them. In any case, all those lessons you were determined to teach me finally seemed to coincide with you emerging from your larvae-hood, to become a little person who was suddenly smiling and cooing at me. But I swear you never smile more at me than when I’m crying. And then I just have to smile back at you, despite my tears. Tricky, very tricky.
Life has certainly changed a lot in these last six months. I went from being a pretty carefree and adventurous young woman with plans of jetting off to this place or that at the drop off a hat, to….scratch that. I’m still feeling adventurous and hey, didn’t I already drag you off to California with me, just the two of us when you were barely 5 months old? It’s all just more challenging now and I’m not just talking about airport security.
But the truth is, that for every fancy media dinner cocktail and travel writing trip I’ve given up, there have been whole little moments (who knew poop could be projected that far??) that have been more fulfilling than even the most finely-crafted sazerac.
Your Dad and I are taking you to New Orleans in February and I can’t wait to go out into the world, just the three of us. As complicated as you are determined to make our lives, you’ve also made them the very opposite of boring. And I think that ever since I was an angsty teenager, I’ve been swearing to myself that I would not live a boring life. Maybe I should have had you years ago, huh?
Anyway, I just want to thank you for being here. I truly can’t imagine my life without you now.
The other day I was crying over what will someday be known as The Great Christmas Card Debacle of ‘09 (you are going to think we are so weird when you’re old enough to see the card) and I was missing my parents so much, and I looked down at you smiling and laughing up at me as my tears dripped onto your pajamas and I realized, as I looked into your eyes, that I have them back. My parents are in you now. And so are their parents and Greg’s parents and his siblings and my aunts and uncles and all those Boose relatives spread out across Ohio, and my dad’s weird relatives in Michigan, and wow, I thought, you are full of so many good people.
You better live up to them all, little bug. Happy six month birthday.
