Cooked Goose

You know that horrific hypothetical scenario in which a person is caught in a tragic situation with only enough time and resources to save one of two drowning loved ones? You know that thing we’ve all thought about in our moment of morbid soul sifting? Well, put a child in that scenario on the dock, holding the floatation instrument, that child will not give it a moment’s thought before tossing that styrofoam donut toward … you guessed it, Mom. That’s right., Dad goes down. As well he should. A child loves his/her Mom. It’s just the way it is, man. It’s not personal. Not that they don’t love you; it’s just that they don’t love anything, anyone more than Mom.

A generalization. Yes. But also generally true. It stands to reason then that the first thing in fatherhood is loving the Mom. I think things are way more connected than we’d like to believe. As much as we’d like to fragment our lives and deal with them in pieces as they best suit us, life just doesn’t seem to work like that. Tell a child, “I really can’t stand your mom, but remember, I love you.” That child, if he/she could, would say, “That’s dumb dad.” They may not know exactly how, and they may not yet possess the ability to articulate the reasons why, but they know something’s wrong with that statement.

Some of us are thinking, “That’s a rough one.” The first thing is the thing that can’t be done. I get that. I don’t know your situation – in no position to pass judgement. And yet, I didn’t start writing to say “It’s all good.” You don’t need to look far to know, it’s not all good. And c’mon, you don’t want me to just tell you what you want to hear. Unless you want to hear the truth. Well, then I guess I am telling you what you want to hear. “Boy, didn’t we just tell you not to do that … well, alright then.”

Want to love your kids well? The first thing: Love their Mom. Do right by her.

Have you picked up in these posts that I’ve had some anger issues? I have, and continue to struggle with them. Without laying on a couch and crying, “My mommy didn’t love me,” I will say as far as I can tell, a good deal of the darkness came on me in early childhood. So, it’s been with me my whole life. For me, as I’d guess is the case with many, anger comes skipping hand in hand with its sister, depression. I don’t know what constitutes clinical. I do know that in those worst days, when the darkness swept over me, it was pitch black.

When the demons come out, your family gets a real close look. So for years, especially those first few years, my wife and kids took the brunt of my bouts with the darkness. I remember one day after one of those frequent bouts, I sat across from a colleague at dinner. We were on a business trip to San Diego. This colleague, he’s a bit more than a colleague. He is over a decade my senior with two grown children. For years he closely mentored me, and in the process we’d grown to become unique friends – our times together are infrequent, but seldom casual.

Over fried chicken and biscuits, he asked me how things were at home. I was as you might imagine feeling defeated and hopeless. I confided in him my struggle with anger and depression. And told him, I felt I’d done irreparable damage to my most treasured relationships. Without so much as a beat of hesitation, he said, “I’ve seen you with your wife, kids. You are a good man. You are a good father. Sure, you’ve made mistakes, but it is never too late. You can do it.” Yeah, bit of a mixture: some truth, a good deal of hope – his reckless hope. When I could not muster it, I needed somebody else to hope for me.

He was right. So, let me extend to you the hand that was extended to me. Whatever’s happened, whatever you’ve done or failed to do, it’s not too late. You can do it. For those who seek it, there’s always hope.

We did what responsible, expectant parents do. We signed up for Lamaze class. Nothing makes you feel more clueless than entering into the whole parenthood process. It’s all new, and it’s all so important. There’s this great scene in Raising Arizona in which … well, you can see it for yourself.

Do you see HI (Nicholas Cage’s character)? Do you see how dazed, out of sorts he looks? Do you see Ed’s (Holly Hunter) panic and guilt? Those are feelings with which you grow familiar in those early stages of parenthood. I walked into Lamaze class with some of those feelings, wearing an uncertain, docile grin. There was an assertive, heavy boned nurse lady or at least I assume she was a nurse, and there was no mistaking – she was running the show. Words like “uterus” and “vaginal” this or that were being thrown around, and we were on the floor, holding, rubbing … man, I was out of my element. Looking around at the other dads; none of us looked right.

My wife did not have your typical labor experience. They had to break her water, and hop her up on Pitocin before the real labor kicked in. When it did, I was ready. The weeks of Lamaze training summoned to the forefront of my mind. I stood in an athletic position, bedside. Made eye contact. Hee, Hee, Ho..Ho…Wheeeeeew. Hee, Hee, Ho..Ho…Wheeeeeeew. I “Ho, Ho’d” and “Hee, Hee’d” for hours. Eight hours into an unrelentingly steady contraction regiment and my wife was 1 cm dilated. “One centimeter! How can that be?”

Seeing us deflated, the nurse asked my wife if she’d be interested in some drugs. I jumped in and told her that we were not, and that we were really interested in trying to do this naturally. That’s when the nurse looked at me with a look that said, “Um, are you the one about to push an 8 lbs baby into the world from between your legs?” She composed herself, and appealed for me to defer to my wife. It was the most sensible appeal I’d ever heard. Then she proceeded to help us understand that my wife would not be choosing something “lesser” by getting some badly needed help.

Even Lamaze has an agenda. It’s not a bad agenda: “Natural is better.” Some truth there. And it can be helpful, so long as it’s left in its proper place. But like many other things, it can spawn a strange achievement, class struggle. The Natural and the Drugged. It can put unnecessary pressure on a mother doing something unbelievably heroic – drugs or no drugs. If I could, I would tell my younger self, “Don’t add to the pressure she may have already heaped on herself.” With our second and third, we were ready to order straight away.

“Yes, thanks. She’d like to start with some of those great narcotic stuff we had last time we were here. And then, of course, she’ll have the epidural. Can we have them come out together?”
“No, I don’t think she’s quite ready yet for the epidural.”
“Oh, okay, yeah, that’s fine. Then just bring out the other stuff, and we’ll go with the epidural later. Thanks.”