As I watch my wife’s belly grow with our little person inside, I gain some perspective on the passing of time. When nothing is really impending on you, It’s easy to feel like you have all the time in the world. As reality sneaks up, you realize how quickly those days pass and how much there is to be done.
My wife is lying next to me napping on this lazy Saturday afternoon. Building a person must be exhausting. Our DNAs each line up their halves of the blueprint and work together to create something new, some hybrid of us two. When two become one. I always thought that meant sex, but it’s taken on another meaning now.
I never knew if I wanted to be a father. It always seemed like a hard job and far too important to screw up. And honestly, I never would have trusted myself before. Even now I don’t know what to expect. Everyone who has done it has words of wisdom or warnings, but I’m trying to go into it without expectations or too many plans of my own. It seems like the kind of thing that you only understand how to do once you’ve done it. Just like the mixing of our DNA, even after you’ve raised a kid you probably don’t even know what you really did.
We got to see the baby for the first time just a few days ago. Some of our (I consider us all one unit now) family came from Venezuela and wanted to do a gender reveal. This big black balloon took up all the space in the front seat of our car. My wife had to ride in her mom’s lap in the back seat with her aunt and her aunt’s mother in law. The opaque ball blocked my view out of the passenger side window, and I couldn’t help but feel a little worried. What if I didn’t see a car coming and we got into a wreck? What if something happens to my unborn child? These kinds of thoughts reverberate in my head as the laughs of these Latina women echo through this giant bag of air next to me. These once unfamiliar protective feelings are becoming more common every day.
We made it home, just around the corner, safe, and I sigh a bit of relief. One small step for this man. That black balloon loomed in the living room while we put together snacks and hypothesized on the gender of what’s in that little ball of her belly. Is it a he or she or something in between? Things aren’t so simple these days, but then again, maybe they never really were. We’ve talked about the idea that what if our kid is transgender or gay or anything of the sort, and we just want someone healthy and happy, whatever that means.
When we stick the balloon with a needle, a shower of blue glitter and smaller blue balloons rains down on us. I hug my wife and then get attacked with embraces from all sides. Our little ball is to be a boy. Though I may not know what it is to be a father just yet, I’m learning a little every day what it feels like to be a dad.
