I am going to be a father - in less than two months. You know this already. It just hit me. I had a few weeks of bliss and have now entered into the "holy (pick your expletive)" stage and I am starting to realize that for the first time in a bit, I am heading into territory that is completely foreign to me. It just seems so fitting in my life and in an era of hyper-speed-everything that fatherhood would come this way. I am 36 years old and I guess if I look at it in a certain way, 2 months to prepare at 36 is better than what, say, my brother dealt with as a newly wed at 22 - 9 months to get used to an idea.
I will be a little vulnerable here and tell you that I miss my dad a lot right now. When I say that, I am aware that I hardly remember him. It's like missing an imprint, a shadow, an empty space - the "Khora" as Plato called it - the empty yet pregnant space in my life where possibility is the only reality. It feels like there was something that was supposed to be here called "my father". He was supposed to be here and share some wisdom with me having gained that wisdom over many years of allowing life to teach him and mold him into a man who was familiar with struggle and joy and understood how to hold them together in the same space and simply love without pretense. But, he's not here and what I have instead is an ideal that may or may not have happened. He may have been like so many older people in my life - slowly breaking down on levels they don't even perceive, decaying from the inside-out, wrapped in "truths" that are like old frosting on a moldy cake.
On a brighter note: I also have an arm-full of wonderful friends that are fathers and I have been asking them advice a lot about fatherhood. The number one piece of advice I get from them is this: Don't let it come between you and your wife. This advice is often given with a voice of regret - so, I have logged that one away and I am bracing for the adventure of my life. I have been daydreaming about this for 6 years and the reality is coming, like a Big Mac and fries - quick and ready to go. I am not ready...not sure I could be even if I stopped everything and focused on only that fact.
In the middle of this, I am heading to Rwanda for two weeks. I'll do some writing from that place and I am sure it will be tinted with the slow-groove that is Africa. I have some more to say regarding impending fatherhood and what it brings to my heart and mind.....stay tuned. (-:
Seth
