My free time with Kai has been incredibly rewarding these past few months. From the moment he began to walk (@12 months), the door in his mind and personality has swung wide into the open expanse of the world around him. As I described to a dear friend, Kai now walks with a purpose into a world where there are not enough hours in the day to experience it all. As an infant, short glimpses of his personality would manifest itself: a sweet smile, an infectious laugh, a gentle sigh. But it has been during this period after he began to walk and the present (@14 months), that I have seen his heretofore nascent individuality ebulliently come to the surface. Being a new dad and rediscovering the world through his eyes has been more joyous and life affirming than I have ever thought possible. There is nothing more amazing than to see him experience with wonder what we adults would consider prosaic and mundane: a light turning on; watching water go down the drain; finding a single strand of hair in the carpet. It is an immense, enriching and huge experience.
I think back on those strained early months of transition from being a dude to a dad: the long hours, 3AM feedings and sleepless nights. Then I recall the very first time he ambled towards me with his favorite book, handed it to me and then sat in my lap waiting for me to read it to him and turn the page. It was such a pure moment, a moment of paternal intimacy that I had imagined in my head again and again, even before he was born. But the intellectualized version didn’t even touch the real.
It was a moment not unlike the first time I held him in my arms after he was born and gazed into his face. Surreality washed over me and I suddenly felt as though I were outside of myself, looking into my new life through the lense of a telescope. But as I stood there, cradling this tiny human being in my arms, someone who carried with him all of my hopes and dreams and failings, I rushed back haphazardly over my own memories of childhood and adult life: a listless life as a child with a Dad in the Navy; growing up a flatlander in Chicago; being an English major in College, then working at the studio; the first time I met Jennifer, the day we got married and then our trip to the hospital just hours earlier before he was born. And then there it was. Such an imperceptible shift, but something that changes you forever: the very definition of yourself as an individual wrapped up into that singular moment of connection with your first born child. In a single instance, all of the disconnects you had ever perceived in your life are suddenly connected, all of the needs that you felt had gone wanting suddenly showed themselves to be nothing more than phantoms, illusions and shadows. A pure human moment, a moment of familial epiphany. What it feels like to be a dad.
Like the first time he sat down to read with me, or the first time I get to hear him say “I love you Dad”. My wish is to be here for him when it happens, and that I’ll recognize those moments when they come.
