My First Week as a Dad
I’ve learned more lessons in one week as a father than in entire years of my life before.
Tiny, tiny hands reach out, and little fingers wrap around my own much larger one. My boy blinks at the brightness of the world and coos sweetly. Thirty seconds later, his little face scrunches into a mass of wrinkles, and he lets out a hearty wail: it’s diaper time.
I’m starting to detect some of the subtle differences in my son’s wails and screams after just seven days.
Wah-waaah = “Dad, my diaper is full.”
AAaaggWWaaaGGGHH = “I have so much gas!”
Aaaa-Ahh-Wahhhh-aaaa-wahhhhh = “Where is my mother, the vessel of bounty?”
ARRGHHHA = “Why is life like this?”
I never really set out to be a father. It wasn’t something I thought about much. Some days, I still feel like I’m barely a breath away from being a kid myself, learning hard lessons about the world in between happy sessions of Dungeons and Dragons or exploring the wilderness of my Northern California homeland.
Being a dad seemed like some strange monolith glimpsed through fog. More fiction than fact. Now, suddenly, it’s here. I’m standing before it, humbled and in awe.
