I stand at the corner of Grand Street and Queens Boulevard, waiting for a bus to take me home. It is 5:30 in the morning. It has taken me a small eternity to get here on the subway from the Upper East Side. The sun is just starting to peek out from behind an abandoned furniture warehouse on the other side of the Boulevard. The weather is surprisingly mild for this time in November, brisk but not freezing. I am hoping to get a few hours sleep before I return to the hospital and visit you. You are two hours old. I am profoundly exhausted. I have been for a while, I’m sure, but I am only now reaching the point where my adrenaline is fading.
Standing here in the early morning sun, shivering more from fatigue than cold, I am gripped by a sudden, profound sense of This is real, isn’t it? I’ve already held you in my arms, heard you mew (you didn’t quite cry when you were just born; you let out a plaintive, almost cat-like sound), seen a small cut on your eyelid from the trauma of being born and felt a pain I’d never known before.
But it’s not until this very moment that the enormity of it all crashes down on me. You were anxious get here, almost six weeks premature. At this very moment, I don’t feel ready for this. I don’t understand that no one, in the history of time, ever has been.
Looking back, I feel this is my last singular moment, my last time feeling something selfish like What does all this mean for me? I go home and sleep a few deep hours, wake up, and go back to the hospital, feeling nervous the entire time, like this is when things will get real. But I arrive and see your mother and hold you in my arms again, and I have no anxious, crushing feeling of me. There is only we.
Last year, I wrote an appreciation for The Baby on her third birthday. Here it is a year later, and she’s turning four, which I can barely fathom. She talks better than me now. She’s learning her letters and numbers at lightning speed. I’m looking into kindergartens (to enroll her in, not just peeping through the window). She has become extremely opinionated about her daily wardrobe. Truth be told, she’s not The Baby any more. She’s a little girl.
I can barely say that, or even write it, because it seems so insane to me. The amount of time that’s passed in her life already is unfathomable to me, as difficult to wrap my head around as the concept of infinity (which I had to do when she asked me ‘What comes after space?’ and I tried to explain to her that space goes on forever). And I realize that so many of the cute things she said and did when she was little are dangerously close to being lost in my memory (because I need that brain-space to remember crappy 30-year-old commercials).
So I’m furiously trying to compile all these items so they won’t be forgotten (in a Word doc, because computer programs never become obsolete!). Like how when she was newborn, she wouldn’t cry, but make a ‘mew’ sound, almost like a kitten. How when was only a few months old, she used to light up when she heard the Feist tune used in an incessant series of iPod ads. How she had a set of play keys and would toddle around the house trying to “unlock” all the doorknobs she could barely reach.
As I compiled these things, going in chronological order as much as I can, what I keep coming back to is how gloriously silly she is, and how that allows me to be silly in a way that would be impossible without her. Like how she’s watched Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure so many times now that I recite scenes from it with her, verbatim (at her insistence). Or how she does the herky-jerky dance from Mr. Show (don’t worry, I just let her watch the dancing part). Or how she wants to be a “spaceman,” and asks mommy to make her a spacesuit out of tinfoil. (Stunning results seen here.) Or how, when she’s taking a bath, she loves to see me slide past the open bathroom door in my socks, often backward. (I’m talented.)
With each passing day, as she discovers something new, I feel like I’m discovering it right along with her. It helps that she has an affinity for things I like, such as The Adventures of Pete and Pete (she does a spot-on impression of Artie, Strongest Man in the World). But it’s so easy to be jaded and cynical about everything in this world, and having her in my life reminds me that there are wonderful things in it.
When she was first born, and I’d see her lying in her bassinet sleeping, I’d approach it slowly and listen for her breathing. It seemed impossible to me that something so unbelievably tiny and fragile could be alive. I thought a strong wind could hurt her. As time goes on, you realize that kids are much tougher than they appear. I’m astounded at how quickly her bumps and bruises disappear; you can literally see her heal over the course of a day.
Even so, when your child is hurt, it pains you like nothing you’ve felt before. Earlier this year, The Baby came home from school in an odd mood. She’s very often cranky, but this was something different entirely. She seemed depressed. I kept asking her what was wrong, but she said “nothing,” in this sad, distant voice that told me it definitely wasn’t nothing.
I did lots of things to cheer her up, putting on her favorite shows, taking her out for pizza, then getting her ice cream. She’d be happy for short bursts, then I could see a switch go off, as if she remembered “oh wait, I’m still sad,” and she would settle into a funk again.
Finally, as we walked back home, I got the story out of her. Some boy she was friends with at day care said he wasn’t going to play with her anymore. He would play with some other girl. She was heartbroken, and it broke my heart, too. It was her first taste of rejection more serious than me not giving her a cookie, and I realized this was the just the first of many heartbreaks that awaited her. I thought about being a little kid and how awful it feels to be excluded, usually for reasons you’re never told or can’t understand, and I felt the weight of all that sadness on me.
We were walking home on an overpass above the Long Island Expressway. She likes to watch the cars zip back and forth beneath her, especially at night, and the Manhattan skyline glisten through the exhaust haze in the distance. She stared in that direction, but really didn’t take any of it in.
“You feel sad?” I asked
“Yeah,” she said.
“You know what I do when I feel sad? I think about things that make me happy. You know what makes me happy? You.”
“Really?”
“Yeah, sometimes I’ll get sad or mad during the day when I’m away from you, and I’ll think of something silly you did or said and it makes me happy. Maybe you can think of somebody who makes you happy and that will make you feel better.”
She thought for a while, hand on chin, and named a classmate, not the one who’d just rejected her. “She makes me funny!” she said, which I interpreted to mean, She makes me laugh, and added, “I like to make people funny!”
“It’s nice to make people laugh,” I said, “because when people laugh, they’re happy.”
“Yeah…” she said, with a little laugh herself. We went home and watched Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure for the 8 billionth time. She laughed as hard as she always does for the Breakfast Machine scene, and when Pee-Wee yells IS THERE SOMETHING YOU CAN SHARE WITH THE REST OF US, AMAZING LARRY?!
She could not stay awake long enough to see her other favorite part, Pee-Wee overdubbed in his movie cameo (“Paging Mr. Herman…”), and fell asleep curled up next to me. I carried her to bed, laid her down, and kissed her good-night.
Watching her sleep, I thought about how tiny she once was and how I used to think her every breath was a miracle. And I thought about how fragile she once was, and still is, and how there isn’t a single thing I wouldn’t do to spare her one second of pain. Though I’m sure I could do anything for her, I haven’t been called on to do anything Herculean yet. Usually it just takes a 98-pound man-child wrapping scotch tape around his face.
While I was busy trying to immortalize the majesty of Steampipe Alley, I made another video discovery: a bunch of digital camera movies I’d totally forgotten about. All the clips were less than a minute, and came from when my daughter was only a few months old. Grasping at her toes. Shoving toys into her mouth. Flailing wildly in a vain attempt to control her limbs. All of the small triumphs of a tiny life.
Watching these moments, they felt like yesterday to me, and yet, they feel like forever ago. I felt almost crushed by the weight of time, by how much she’s grown since then, and by the realization of how quickly she’ll grow up from how big she is already.
That’s because I try to be funny on this here site. Whether or not I succeed is another story, but that’s my intent. The sad fact is, frustration and anger are funny, while happiness isn’t. That’s why most comedians are such well-adjusted people.
Tolstoy famously said all happy families are alike, while every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. I don’t think that’s entirely true. But I do think every person’s notion of happiness is so deep and profound that it becomes un-profound to the larger world. Within the universe of you, it means everything, but to everyone else, it means nothing.
That may be why I don’t write about my daughter on this site very often. Because she makes me happy in a way that defies words. Happy doesn’t do it justice. It’s the closest word there is, and it’s still light years away from what I feel. Trying to describe how she makes me feel would be like trying to describe my own brain: I’ve never seen it, and I never will see it. I just know it’s there and it makes me alive.
She makes me feel happy in a way I haven’t felt when I was a child, that feeling of pure, unadulterated joy unbroken by any worries or fears. It’s a rare feeling, especially for me. I’ve never been able to turn off my What Now alarm for too long, even when I was a kid. It is extremely difficult for me to forget about Life and have fun. But being goofy with my daughter brings me to someplace childlike and wonderful, and it happens so easily I can hardly believe it.
It kills me to drop her off at day care each morning, kiss her goodbye, and spend the whole day without her. A minute doesn’t go by that I don’t think about her, about walking in the front door and seeing her and being silly with her. Sometimes I think of myself as Homer in that one flashback Simpsons episode, when he arranges pictures of Maggie around his de-motivational plaque so that DON’T FORGET: YOU’RE HERE FOREVER reads DO IT FOR HER.
The sad fact of my life/schedule is that I see her at her worst parts of the day: early in the morning, when she fights to stay asleep (like Daddy, she is not a morning person), and at night, when she can be just as cranky. Not to mention all the stupid Life Things I have to do that get in the way of playing with her. I live for the weekends, when I get to spend hours with her and enjoy her in all her wide-eyed, curious, and crazed glory.
I could recount a million little things she’s said and done that warmed my soul, but they wouldn’t mean anything to you. However, I would like to share one little story with you, with a preface:
One of the hardest things to learn as a new parent is that your kid won’t love you the way you love them. They can’t. Babies are Pure Id. They are nothing but Need and Want. They will get mad at you and yell at you and hit you when you dare to deny them their every whim, or don’t yield to it fast enough for their fancy. You can’t take it personally. All you can do is love them and hope they learn to love by osmosis.
So I’ve come to expect low returns on my investment of affection. But one day a few months ago, I was playing with my daughter on our bed. Jumping around, hiding under the covers, just being silly. All of a sudden, in the middle of all of the goofiness, she stopped and fixed me with this quizzical, serious look.
“I like you, Daddy!” she said, as if she had just realized or decided this. Up to that moment, I’d never heard her say “I like [anything]”. I almost burst into tears. It meant so much more to me than hearing her repeat I love you, because it was so real and genuine. It wasn’t rote, something I forced on her through repetition. It was a conclusion she’d come to, one she felt she must declare. “I like you, too!” I said, and gave her a huge hug.
Today, she’s made me happy for three full years. It feels like yesterday, and it feels like forever, in the best way.
Standing here in the early morning sun, shivering more from fatigue than cold, I am gripped by a sudden, profound sense of This is real, isn’t it? I’ve already held you in my arms, heard you mew (you didn’t quite cry when you were just born; you let out a plaintive, almost cat-like sound), seen a small cut on your eyelid from the trauma of being born and felt a pain I’d never known before.
