Five Months

I feel like a father. It’s beginning to feel natural. I have completely changed from the person I was at this time last year when I was trying to imagine what being a father was going to be like. Even then I was completely different than the person I was the year before that when all I worried about was what Christina and I were going to do that night and whether or not we had enough weed to help pass the time. The two-year journey that has taken place has been a wondrous eyes wide open affair. Sometimes it seems like the days have whizzed by, but when I think about all that has happened it seems impossible that we did so much in only a couple of years. It’s very easy to take our time here for granted. I don’t know why. It doesn’t make sense to just let our life disappear when it is all we have. Why is it so hard to appreciate ourselves?

Anyway, back to the beautiful joy of being a father. This experience is one where you definitely have the ability to see some beauty in the world. If you look closely enough it isn’t that hard to see through the muck and discover the lotus flower glowing in all its glory. It’s right there when he grabs his feet and chews on his toes. It’s in the way his ears stick out like mine do in the fading photos from a psychedelic age. It’s hidden inside the clarity that grows within his eyes each day (I swear that he’s smarter today!). There’s beauty bursting forth from his tiny little eighteen-pound frame and flowing beneath the goosebumps on my skin as I feel his warm heartbeat beneath the palm of my hand. It’s there so soft in the morning before I leave for work and take a moment to look at two sleeping angels, identical visions who float through the day with me. It’s there when I can’t help but smile when the edges of his mouth reach for his ears. Even the struggle, the heartache, the frustration that comes with raising a newborn. None of it has gotten to me yet.

The only part of my life that has really suffered is my relationship with Christina. Although we were warned about the toll that having a child would take on us, which was probably the main reason that we waited so long in the first place, I wasn’t really concerned about it. All those anecdotes that we heard wouldn’t possibly apply to us. And the first few months it seemed okay because you’re so focused on the daily requirement of taking care of Lucas (yes, it’s a full time job!), but I thought that eventually we’d slide right back into the special connection that we shared. But now that we are beginning to feel natural about being parents it’s taking a lot more effort to create the type of environment that got us here in the first place. I’ve forgotten what it feels like to simply be a husband. I know that we put so much energy toward Lucas and it’s so very easy to love him, but Christina is my best friend and I cherish her more than anything. I hope that this is just something that we will eventually overcome and that time will strengthen the bond that we share, that the growth we’ve felt these past two years will continue to provide inspiration. Because I miss her. I see her every day and still...I miss her so much.