How Real Is It?

Oh, make no mistake, this business is real.

It’s curious to me that everyone keeps asking me essentially the same question: Are you ready? Do you have everything ready? Is everything ready for the baby? This line of inquiry begs the further question, what exactly constitutes a state of preparedness? To me, it’s not unlike asking a soldier, Are you ready to go off to war? To which the soldier might reply, “My uniform and weapon aside, am I ready…?” Of course, when one likens one’s progeny to going to war, the metaphor breaks down a bit.

This past week I did have a wonderful privilege of visiting a newborn parishioner in the hospital. Hardly four days old, the baby’s parents insisted that he be retrieved immediately from the nursery so that I could hold him and say a blessing over him. I was only too happy to oblige. That is, until I had him in my arms and he was all wrapped up in the blanket the way that newborns are wrapped up and wearing that hat that newborns wear. And upon his face was that uncannily wise and earnest expression that newborns often bear. Looking into that infant’s knowing gaze it seemed as though a few indescribable things were imparted to me. It was one of those moments that brought a good many things into sharp focus.

It wasn’t fear that I felt. At least not the bad, I-change-my-mind-semi-colon-this-was-a-horrible-mistake kind of fear that one sometimes has after eating the super monster burrito or drinking that 11th beer. But it was that heavy kind of wondrous awe. Gravitas, they sometimes call it. That sublime realization that one is not merely unprepared but even unworthy to accept that which is about to happen. Not unlike when I was ordained a priest. Standing in that hospital room and holding that baby was in many respects a mundane and unremarkable event. But in light of our own circumstances, there was something undoubtedly holy about it. That was probably why it felt so real.

Many people keep asking me: are you ready? No, I am not ready. Not in the least.

I do operate mostly with a subtly cavalier attitude. I refrain from thumping my paternal chest too much lest my insecurities seem so glaring. But I try not to let my cards show too much. I don’t, after all, want to let on to others exactly how unprepared I am. But there is a slight expectant fatherly bravado. (What can I say, when I get nervous, I make jokes that occasionally border on the inappropriate to break the tension. Birthing Class was, therefore, a struggle for me. Never mind the fact that I thought it was only one class, rather than four classes. Thank God it was four classes. That first class revealed to me the extent to which I am entirely ignorant of how baby’s get from there to here, so to speak.)

But a lucid moment during sleep last night awakened me abruptly with the thought that Stefanie will not only give birth, but that we will then have to take that child home and care for it. Owning up easily, willingly to the adage that no one is ready for parenthood, at this point I may be fully prepared to be utterly unprepared.