I’ll be honest; I didn’t have the best reaction when I found
out that my wife and I were going to have a baby. She broke the news to me
while on vacation in a hotel outside of Cincinnati. When she told me, I spent
an hour shut up alone in the hotel bathroom listening to a Reds-Nationals game
through the flimsy door while dealing with my conflicted emotions. Not the
greatest start to fatherhood. I’d like to think that I’ve grown a bit since
then. I hope. Once I’d gathered myself and wrestled my emotions, there was one
thing that came to my mind; a vision really: I imagined myself hiking with my
child; pointing out the animals and natural features to their wild-eyed wonder.
It was that image that helped me push past the fear and doubt that plagued our
pregnancy.
My daughter, now nearly two, surprised me last Friday night.
I had just persevered through another work week, and pushed past a
disappointing set of circumstances. The summer had faded into autumn a day before as
the temperature had dropped and the scent of fall was in the air. I needed to
hike. I needed to get out; to get lost; to be surrounded by a world larger than
myself. So I packed up my things and as I was walking out the door my daughter
came up to me.
“Hiking,” she said in her sweet, musical voice, “I hiking.”
I told her that she needed to stay and eat dinner and that daddy was going to
be back real soon. She didn’t take well to that notion. She began whining,
saying “I want go hiking.” My wife and I just gave each other bemused glances.
My daughter went downstairs and began tugging at my backpacking equipment. In
the end I managed to convince her that she needed to stay and eat. I promised
that we would go hiking tomorrow and with that I was off.
True to my word, I waited anxiously for her to wake from her
nap the next day. Once awake, I packed some goldfish, a sippy cup, and tossed
her backpack into my truck.
I wish I could see things anew through my daughter’s eyes. I
wish I could understand the wonder with which she experiences things that I
have known for nearly thirty years. I listened as she mimicked the cry of the
Blue Jay perched high atop the skeleton of an ancient oak. She laughed
uproariously as I franticly tried to shake myself free of a spider that had
climbed up my arm. I saw the joy in her eyes as she tried to count the ducks
resting on the surface of the impounded stream. “One, two, five…” I heard her
protests when I tried to walk away before she had finished counting (which is kind
of funny since she can only count to ten). I wish desperately that I could find
within myself the joy that seems to be brimming in her. So much of the anxiety
and frustration I experience on a daily basis is born from a deficiency of joy.
My daughter schools me. I need to hold my life with open hands; to view the
world with the eyes of wisdom but also to view the world with the freshness of
a child. Let me have the veil of cynicism removed to see the mystery of the
world anew.
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