Have a kid and everything changes. This will not be news to most of you, but it was news to me. Big news. I had heard those words over and over, and still I couldn't have anticipated the consequences. No one could have accurately described them to me, even though lots of people tried.
I'd like to share them.
And since this is my book and not yours, you'll just have to put up with my going on about this for a while. Or else I'm taking my bottles and diapers and going home, to put myself down for a nap.
See. Have a kid, and right away you start acting like one.
- -
We never tried to get pregnant. It just kind of happened. We knew we wanted kids, as a concept, but the lunatics inside both my wife and me were still scared, and maybe a bit selfish. It took us eight years even to get married. I thought, "What would I do with a kid? What would a kid do with me?"
And then, one night, within a moment, my whole perspective changed. I was staying with an old friend from childhood, and her father was in town. We were sitting in her living room, laughing about something, and suddenly I noticed her father looking at her with what can only be described (though words cannot really describe the look) as a sparkling gaze of pride, love, and friendship. All at once he asked for a kiss and a hug. I said, "I'll hug you, but a kiss is out of the question." I learned later that he was speaking to her.
This ineffable moment between parent and child made me rethink everything. We knew-superficially-that having a child would change our lives, change sex, change everything.
Guess what? It's the best thing that ever happened to us. We wouldn't change a thing.
My reaction to the news that Laura was pregnant was screaming. Loud, sustained screaming.
My wife said, "Is something wrong?"
"No, no. That's an excited scream." Nuances can be so subtle.
In retrospect, the whole process was kind of fun. I've never had such manly feelings, both for her as well as about myself. Laura has never looked more radiant. There's something about how lovely pregnant women are that even makes you fall in love with pregnant strangers.
Of course, we were scared to death. Laura said, "Now what do we do?" We worried: "Oh, God, what if the baby doesn't make it? What if it's sick or deformed?" The terror is nonstop, even after they're born. Mostly after they're born.
When I got the news that we were expecting, I called my older brother and asked for his advice. He said, "I'd suggest going out to dinner."
"That's all you can tell me about having a kid?"
"I'm telling you: just pick a place right now and go out to dinner, because you will not be able to do this for a long, long time, and you don't realize how cool it is just to go out to dinner. Even if you have a baby‑sitter, it's almost unbearable the first time the kid stands at the door as you're trying to get into the car, crying wildly because he or she doesn't want you to go out. Try and enjoy your dinner then."
How much being a parent would change my life didn't occur to me until I was heaving up my dinner the day my daughter was born. I'd had dinner at the hospital, then had to stop in the parking lot and throw up: once because of the baby, twice because of the food. When I finally got home, my first instinct was to pack a suitcase, leave a note-"I can't handle this"-and run away.
- -
Before my daughter was born, we learned that she had a potential genetic defect. It's a horror that a lot of people go through. I understand it. Our doctor was very concerned. A specialist said, "It's within normal values for this certain enzyme, but it's on the edge."
Everything worked out okay.
During the tests, our doctor had a picture of my daughter's chromosomes on the wall.
"Well, there she is. You must be very proud."
"God, she looks so. . small."
"All those rods are what will determine her every detail."
So I asked if there was a way we could give her bigger tits. The doctor took me seriously.
"No!"
"What about better eyesight?"
She got really mad. "You can't go in there and start fiddling with your child's chromosomes, young man!" With that, my wife and I took our chromosomes and left. Later, Laura told me the doctor wanted to test me, as well. Before our appointment, Laura kept reminding me to wear clean underwear.
"Are they clean?"
"I don't know."
"What do you mean you don't know? How can you not know?"
"They were clean when they originally started, but I went to the gym today and I've been running around."
Laura explained that the doctor was going to want to see my penis. That sounded like a reasonable request. Besides, I'd been wanting to show it to her. Not really. In fact, quite the opposite. I felt very uncomfortable. Every time the doctor would ask me a question, I got pissy.
Finally, I said, "Enough with the questions. When do I get to show you my penis!" The doctor said nothing.
Then Laura piped up. "Sorry, doctor. He's like this with everybody." Then they both started laughing.
I discovered later that the two of them were in on this and just trying to get back at me for that crack about the chromosomes.
I had to kill them both.
My next book will be about single parenting.
- -
It was a natural birth. That is, there were no Satanists in the delivery room. We used the Lamaze method. Look at the word closely. With a little male ingenuity, a well‑positioned apostrophe, and French as a second language, Lamaze could be rewritten as L'Amaze. That's what birth is. Amazing.
At the time, though, I kept thinking it was LaFromage, or LaDecoupage, or something like that.
My wife didn't want her drugs until after our daughter was born. I told her, "This is not the Olympics or a gladiator movie. If it starts hurting, take the damn Demerol."
That, and a stern look at the attending nurse, and I didn't have to say it twice.
My wife was really good. We'd gone to childbirth classes together and she wanted me there. She could have cussed out the nurses when the pain got too intense, but it wouldn't have meant as much to her as cursing someone who would take it personally.
It's a good thing I was around. Laura was breathing all wrong and the baby started coming out before it was ready. I had to remind her to hold on.
"Honey. Honey. Hold your breath. We've got to wait until the doctor putts out on the eighteenth green."
Before my kid was born, I used to think very differently about being in the delivery room. Like: There's absolutely no reason to be around. You're there for support, but you're really just a pain in the ass. You coo and whisper supportively, trying to help your wife concentrate on her breathing. It never works.
If it was me having the kid, I'd want to hear a manly song I could sing along with: "In 1814, we took a little trip, along with Colonel Jackson, down the mighty Mississip. We took a little bacon and we took a little beans. ." I could breathe to the drum cadence.
Men also say such stupid things in the delivery room. Men are such lamebrains. She's lying there, and we're going, "God, honey, that's gotta hurt," or "Will I be able to use that area again?"
The woman is also angry, but she's drugged up, tied down, and what the hell is she going to do about it?
You've got a take your licks when you can.
"I don't like your cooking all that well, either. Honey. And you look like hell on Sunday morning."
But that attitude changed the minute we got into the birthing room. I gained considerable insight and realized that birth has a deeper meaning for men than we suspect. Seeing the process firsthand just reinforced my belief that men are far more jealous about women's ability to bear a child than we'll admit. Men can build a skyscraper, but we can't hug it, feed it, change it, coach its Little League team, teach it about sex, or spring it from jail when it's caught joyriding in the family station wagon at three in the morning.
I've read that men are like bees; they just hover around the uterus trying to reproduce themselves. I've also heard that men come out of women and spend the rest of their lives trying to get back in. I don't think it's very complex. The whole business of men and women is reproduction; there's nothing else to it. All the arguments, all the horseshit, all the rhetoric is, at bottom, about reproduction. We can't do what women can, so they have the ultimate power. We act like they don't. We treat them horribly because we can't have kids. We demean them-not because they'll accept it, but just to keep them in their place. If women understood the power they have, I don't know what we'd do.
Maybe they do know. Nah, I can't even consider that. Too scary.
I can't even fathom having a kid. I watched that child come out. The pride swelled up in me. Also the anger, and the competition. What I witnessed was something that hurt my woman and I couldn't stop it. And something that made her happy in a way that I've never been able to make her happy.
This doesn't mean her screams didn't make me think, "Boy! I'm glad I'm a guy!"
That's right. I'm not sorry I'm a man. True, men have all of the destructive tendencies. We're encouraged to be little destroyers from birth. These traits come in handy, though. Once we have a family, we'll destroy anything we have to that threatens it. Women like us for that. Sometimes men get so confused they actually destroy the family.
Some men want to understand pregnancy so desperately (or just get their wives to shut up when their ankles swell to the size of holiday cheese logs) that they'll strap on one of those fake bellies and walk around for a while. This is going a little too far. If you're going to write about it so that we all understand it, okay. It's like Black Like Me. But if you just want to find out what it's like to weigh eighty pounds more, you can eat a lot of those cheese logs or make a movie like The Santa Clause.
- -
An odd thing about fatherhood is the change in camaraderie with other male parents, especially when your kids are still very small. You bond, but the adhesion principle is altogether different from the stereotypical macho posturing about one's fertility and already being able to pay for the kid's college education. That went out long ago, with the eighties. This bond is rife with genuine tenderness, vulnerability, and a little sadness. I don't know why. It just is maybe because having a kid finally connects a man to something he loves unconditionally that, unlike his car or power tools, can actually love him in return.
One guy I know is afraid that someday somebody wearing a suit and carrying a gun is going to walk up to him, out of a crowd, and simply say, "We know. We know you don't know what you're doing. We've been monitoring you." I know what he means. It's not really the "monitors," it's the reality police. It seems like my whole life has been by the seat of my pants. I'm making it up as I go along. I find it strangely funny that God allows me to make decisions; that life does just unfold, and lets me do the best I can. This particularly applies to fatherhood, in which you have ultimate responsibility for a totally dependent being. You can't go back and redo stuff you did, but you can't know if you're getting it right the first time, either.
There are some rules, however.
"Don't go near the pool. Don't hit me in the stomach. You've got to eat more." I just want to take care of my daughter. I don't want her sick. I'm worried about her falling.
My wife is far better at this teaching stuff than I am. She thinks she's horrible at it, but she's wrong. That is why she can bask unashamedly in the delight of the school's calling to say, "Your child is doing extremely well in fire prevention. And the drop drill. Also, your daughter seems to know military rules quite well. She salutes. What are you doing with her at home?"
Working so much, I feel oddly distant from the whole process. I do what I can. There's a lot of guilt involved. My wife says, "If you spent more time with her. ." I spend all the time I can with her. I'm getting better at it, though. Rather than read aloud from books on military tactics and supply requisitioning, we go to dinner and have a couple of kiddy cocktails and a marvelous time. This is usually when Mommy isn't around. My little girl and I relate better then. They're alone together so much. We're alone so rarely. When we're alone together, she and I somehow behave differently. We learn about each other. She learns that I'm her father. I learn that she's my daughter. It's a weird feeling, but any parent knows what I'm talking about when I say that I often look at my daughter and wonder just whose kid she is. Where'd she suddenly come from? And why on earth did she pick Laura and me for parents?
When my daughter and I are alone she'll hug my leg and say, "I just love you so much, Daddy!" She's so used to my leaving that when I tell her she and I are going to hang out all night, she gets this great look on her face and says, "We've got so much to do, Dad!" There's nothing like it in the world.
I want my relationship with my daughter to keep growing, so I've been giving my wife a couple of hundred bucks each week and making her go to the mall with her girlfriends, or something-anything!
But this closeness is not without its problems. When I'm sitting there playing with Barbie, washing her hair, the lunatic in me suddenly says, I've got to get a scotch and get the hell outta. . Right in the middle of all this pleasantness, the lunatic goes, Look at yourself. You're bathing dolls!
My daughter likes to bathe with me. She goes, "Jacuuuzi!" and gets scared when I put the jets on. She likes them, but wants me in there with her. I've got to be there. But I need to know: When do you stop bathing with your daughter? There's a day. It's coming. I want to mark my calendar. Oprah must know. Phil must know. Geraldo must. . nah. I keep asking around, because I never want to find out I've missed it by a day, but I keep getting this: "Oh, you'll know."
I'm not so sure. I want to cut it off long before you'll know, whatever you'll know is. Sounds like an est seminar. I don't want another situation like my brothers and me seeing my mom in the shower and staring just a moment too long.
My daughter likes me to chase her‑-definitely a girl thing that stays with them until the day when they finally allow some lucky guy to catch them. I'm teaching her early, though, to run real fast. I like it better when we're working on my car. I drag her into my world whenever I can. She wanted to help me paint the raised letters on my tires. She likes going for rides with me. She loves going fast. She thinks my Mustang is a Ferrari. That's probably not a bad thing. If I'm real lucky, it will probably save me some money when she wants a Ferrari for her sixteenth birthday.
- -
Having a kid has made me do things I never imagined I would. I nurture other people's kids. I used to be such a smart‑ass around other people who had kids when I didn't. And now, no matter what they do, I understand. I can be talking to an adult and wiping snot off his kid's mouth. I'm grabbing boogers out of some kid's nose and wiping them underneath the table or on the couch. Hey‑-either I do it, or he will.
My wife and I used to avoid sitting next to people with small children on an airplane. Then, the worst thing in the world was a screaming baby.
"Can't they take care of the kid and stop it from crying? Give it something! Why don't they sit in the back of the plane with the engine noise? With a couple of oxygen masks and a blanket, I don't see why they can't ride in the baggage compartment. At least until he stops crying. We paid for these seats!" Like they didn't. Like they get them free. (Don't beleaguered parents always look like indigents even if they're rich?) They're hiding the child and saying "Sorry" to the whole plane, like "Forgive me for having this baby!" We didn't mean to interrupt you reading your inflight magazine.
But once it's your kid, you look at anyone who's impatient with you like, "What's the matter with you? How come you don't have a kid? Get with the program and join the family of man!"
Every single thing you thought you'd never say or think, you say and think in the first two months after childbirth. Everything.
Now I yearn for a better life for all children. I'm interested in better education systems. In mentoring. In health care and eliminating ketchup from consideration as a vegetable at lunch. (Thanks, Ronald Reagan.) It's brought my whole life into focus. And yet, now and then, the lunatic will say, "Uh huh, right! You could run them both over, take the money you got from the TV show, and live with some island beauties, drinking lime rickeys in the Bahamas!"
The lunatic is still alive. Now he just has nowhere near the impact. Besides, I can't hear him as well with the kid crying.
- -
When you're raising kids, it's valuable to have listened to your parents when you were young. You hope they listened to their parents, too. Passing child-rearing wisdom from generation to generation becomes very important. For instance, "You can't party your ass off all your life." You can, but eventually you realize it's energy misdirected.
When my attitude was bad, as a kid, my mom used to say, "I can't wait until you have your own kid." Yeah, right.
"It'll be all different when I have my own kid," I'd say. I was an idiot. Parents wait for that day. And they love to rub it in.
Now, how many times have I said, "Who put this bike here?" when I know exactly who put the bike there.
"Who put boogers on the wall? Who's wiping the boogers all over the wall!"
During one Christmas my daughter went through this phase where she'd pick her nose and wipe it anywhere. My wife, like a real smart parent, said, "You know, you can eat those things!"
At least my wife wasn't wiping stuff on the wall.
Swearing too much around the house is also dangerous when there's a young child about. I've said stuff, then realized my daughter was listening. Even in general conversation you've got to be careful. Kids are a lot like celebrities. Even though they're in the room, people talk about them as if they aren't. You make decisions about and for the child, and you forget they can hear you. They're not stupid. And then, when you're least expecting it, they become little myna birds and repeat what you say.
Recently, my daughter and I went to the supermarket, but not the same market her mom takes her to. She goes there because there are generally fewer people there at a certain time of the day. I don't shop, but I had to get something for dinner, because I'd said I'd make dinner. On the way there, my daughter said, "This isn't where Mommy goes."
"I know, but it's where we're going."
And she said, "Ugh! It'll be a slow boat to China before you can get through that line in a hurry!"
- -
Life's so unfair. Carol died. That's my daughter's fish. We tried to explain death to her. She cried when she found Carol just floating there. We wouldn't have wanted her to see it, but we realized she had to start somewhere and it might as well be with the fish that my wife murdered! Hey, I'm not pointing fingers, but she did spray insecticide in the room, which got in the water, which aced the fish. We were all pretty sad, especially me. I took care of Carol. I liked that fish. This fish had even made it through the big Los Angeles earthquake. It was two hours before we noticed her on the carpet. What a trouper. I would have done anything to save that fish long after my kid got bored with it.
But the fish was dead.
We said we could bury her. I tried to explain that people don't last forever, either. My daughter seemed to understand and accept this. Then, for two weeks, all I heard was "You're going to die, but Mommy's not going to." This always made me very happy to hear.
I said, "No, we both will die."
"No! Not Mommy, but you. You can die, but Mommy's not going to die." Always ready with a quick comeback, I said, "Don't make me prove it."
- -
I'll admit it. When we did the first ultrasound and they said, "It's a little girl," I went, "Ohhh." I actually made that sound. Like I'd opened the wrong Christmas present. Three people in the room said, "What was that all about?" My wife said, "What's `Ohhh' for?"
"Oh-hrmph-I was clearing my throat. Oh, look! A girl! Ohhhh! Dresses and parties and a friend to you! Look at that!"
I was very disappointed. And now, of course, I feel guilty in front of God. This girl is so much pleasure to me that it's incredible. I go to other guys' houses, and their boys are little monsters. The difference is night and day.
Girls love dolls. In a boy's room, if there's a doll, it has no head. Boys love cars. My daughter has car models because I'm trying, very, very slowly, to teach her to tell a Mustang from a Ferrari. I bought her a model that cost fifty dollars! I said, "It's really cool." A few weeks later I asked her where it was. She brought it to me. All the mirrors were broken off. But she likes it. She carries it around with her in her purse. Something's very wrong when a little girl carries a model Volkswagen around in her purse. It's in there with a troll doll and some lipstick. It was supposed to be in its little case. She doesn't care about that. It's jewelry to her.
I'm not sure what this means, but I'm already worried.
- -
When I sit back on a warm night, caressed by a soft breeze, sipping a glass of wine, and I see my daughter playing in the yard, I stop for a moment and think, "There's a lot of pain coming."
As she grows up she's going to hurt me, without even wanting to. She already hurts me and doesn't know how much.
Love hurts.
Once again, I've learned what I've always known: Women are very important for so many different reasons. I don't have to learn this from my daughter, but I'll have to put up with it from her. And maybe I can also pass on to her some understanding of men.
Men don't come from the place of anger or superiority that women think we do. We come from a culture of our own that's based on certain rules and regulations about how men live. I don't read it as power over women, but women think that we do.
Man will always be an outsider, no matter how much he stays at home, cooks, cleans, irons, vacuums, nurtures. I've worn an apron for about six months now. It hasn't done the job. But I'm sticking with the spike heels.
What I'd like my daughter to be is everything her mother is but with some of my input. I wasn't around for my wife's upbringing. I can't change her, even though I might sometimes want to. I'm in on the bottom floor with my daughter. Of course, she's already a lot like her mother, only more hyper and emotional. And shorter. Anyway, I already know I'm not going to be able to change her either. Deep down I'm not sure I really want to.
- -
Having a child has really changed my relationship with my wife. We appreciate our time together more. I love her more than I ever have because she's brought this wonderful thing into my life and she's turned out to be a marvelous mother. We can't argue as much, though, because we don't want our child to hear it.
Instead, we'll clench our teeth and hiss, "Just smile, then."
We never smiled this much when we argued before.
One problem is that when we do argue, my daughter always blames me. Is that the lesson? Girls always stick together?
We're a family, which is the beautiful thing. We're different now. My daughter writes letters in school that say, "I love my mommy. I love my daddy. I love that we're a family." And I'm beginning to love it. I'm beginning to love the three of us doing things together. I love the dynamic we have. I wish I had three children already. I wish two were a lot older. Then Laura and I could give them the responsibility for raising the youngest and we could sit on the patio drinking lime rickeys at sunset.
Being a family has gotten our relationship more in tune. We're part of the family of man. My daughter is only four and a half, but already I love our conversations. I love when she asks me questions about life.
I hope my daughter stays interested in the family and doesn't get so involved in school that I never see her. (Yeah, right.) Or that she doesn't one day say, "Ugh, my parents are taking me to Italy. I wish I could stay at home and just hang out." (Good luck!) And I really hope she never tells anyone, "My father is such a pain. I wish I could figure him out."
On second thought, maybe I wouldn't mind that.