I am going to be a father. At least, this is what has been explained to me. And I don’t have a real hot take on it. I don’t have much of a take at all. Which surprises me. I am a man–well, a male–who is not unacquainted with the feels. Most of the time, I’ve got feelings about stuff whether I’d like to or not, and oftentimes these feelings could be described with words like “anxiety” or “uncomfortability.” But now, staring down the barrel of this very daunting change of life circumstances, I can only describe my feelings as a kind of all-pervasive “huh. How ‘bout that.”
It’s like if someone told me I was going to be boxing against the heavyweight champion of the world next week, except I had no idea what boxing was. “Huh. How ‘bout that. What you’re saying sounds important, and the way you’re saying it sounds like it’s going to be very difficult. But I’ve never heard of boxing, so I don’t know things like that a heavyweight champion could punch my head with 1300 pounds of force, which is 53 times the force of gravity. So, huh.” I could maybe even try to punch myself in the head a couple of times to get my feet wet, but the whole thing would still have an intangibly hypothetical flavor to it.
And that’s how I feel about supposedly becoming a father. Accomplished fathers with multiple heavyweight championships to their names have assured me that it’ll all turn out fine, but I’m not quite sure what “fine” is even supposed to look like. Because in my brain, “fine” means passing my child off to Adulthood without any major psychological scarrings and saying “it’s your problem now, Adulthood.” But that means I’ve gotta keep my head on a swivel for the next 18 years. And that’s a lot of swiveling. I’ll be more swivel than head at that point.
So what’s one to do when you don’t know either the thing or the success criteria for the thing? Right now, the prospect of being a father is kind of like getting the lamest end of Heisenberg Principle–I don’t know where the thing is or where it’s going. What are you supposed to do with a particle in that case–go grab a coffee and hit it up later? Be really nice to the particle until it shows up? Get a research grant so you can explain why it’s actually a really interesting thing that the particle isn’t there and definitely not proof that you’re bad at your job? I guess right now, I’ll go grab a coffee and check in on fatherhood later, but I’ll definitely only be running to the coffee shop across the street. And I’ll definitely be keeping an eye on it through the coffee shop window the entire time, just in case it moves.
pygmanlion 