Sitting in a 1970’s green reclining sofa, I see the clock on the wall.
It reads: 22:05. I have no clue how to read military time,
but the quiet hall outside and the tired,
dark world humming unassumingly through the window
makes me feel like it’s late. There is a hypnotic percussive rhythm
being made by the baby’s heart monitor and the machine
pumping you full of sedatives every 10 seconds or so.
You called today to tell me you had fallen.
You were crying so hard it took me a few minutes
to fully realize what happened. Now you’re lying
in bed, and I’m secretly terrified you are in a coma.
I’ve made a note to stop watching so many hospital dramas.
Every-so-often you will turn your head and blurt out
some nonsensical jabber about pop music or moonbeams,
and I’m relieved because you’re still here with me.
I stare at the monitor hooked up to your sore belly.
In red, the numbers jump from 149 to 150 to 152 and so on.
In some unexplainable way, it is a connection to my son.
It ties us together; somehow joining my nervous world
of bedside gazing to the ether that is the swimming pool
placenta life he has enjoyed for eight months. I fix my eyes
on it and try to force my heart rate into being the same as
his—as if I had any way or knowledge of measuring my own.
But I know between the monitor and your uninhibited slurs
that you are both with me, and it somehow makes this
unnecessarily uncomfortable couch sleep a little better.
One of my favorite poets, Anis Mojgani!
TEDxConcordiaUPOrtland March 31, 2012
— John Lennon
Having a son is, in no certain terms, completely indescribable. I am in no way ready for a kid. I just made the decision to go back to school, or as I like to call it, taking an oath of poverty. Being in school at the same time as Thatch is a weird thought, especially if I go past a master’s degree and get my PhD. By the time I’m through, he’ll have some graduations under his belt, too. Best-case scenario, we will only have to move twice, but moving three or four times is a fair estimate. I’ve worried myself sick over these things for months. Let’s face it; I’m not really fitting into the mold of American domestic dad, but the more I think about it, the more I’m glad we aren’t going to be the Cleavers.
In a way, I’m glad Thatch will see me in school. Our afternoons will be spent at the table doing our homework together. Granted, I’ll be studying Victorian Literature and the French Renaissance and he’ll be learning his ABC’s and simple arithmetic, but he’ll be learning from his dad the importance of an education. He’ll know that in this progressively difficult economy that you aren’t going to get very far being the slacker in the back of the class. Of course, he’ll also learn that his old man is pretty good at playing H-O-R-S-E in the back yard, too.
At the very least, we’re going to have to move cross-country for graduate school. I might even have to spend some time abroad, even ultimately work abroad. My major is extremely broad and globally centric. I’ve spent nights worrying about uprooting Thatch every few years until we land our forever job, but then I decided it might be good for him. You can tell a kid he can go anywhere and do anything, but when he has parents who have travelled and been immersed in different cultures themselves, that idea becomes more of reality. I want so much for Thatcher to understand that the world is bigger than a hometown. If he wants to live in San Francisco or Seattle or France, I want him to know that it is doable. If he grows up and never wants to venture out in the world, that’s okay, too—just as long as he knows he can.
I want for him to be the reincarnation of Huck Finn when he’s a kid. I want him to be an open-minded free thinker in his youth and his own man when he’s an adult and to know that being bilingual doesn’t make you un-American. I want him to be a citizen of the world. I want him to express who he is without me telling him who he should be. Whether he’s a chess aficionado or a little league baseball pitcher, whether he spends his days tinkering with his home science lab or playing in the back yard with his head in the clouds, I want him to be happy. I want him to laugh till his ribs are sore. I hope he learns to befriend the loner in his class. I hope his creativity and wonderment for life isn’t driven out of him by teachers being forced to prepare him for standardized tests and not the Arts and life. I hope he doesn’t settle for a career but sacrifices for the job he really wants. I hope he is patient with me as I’m still working on figuring out life for us.
http://dearthatcher.tumblr.com/
— Christopher McCandless, Jon Krakauer’s Into the Wild
More so than any other book/movie, Into the Wild changed me. I reread passages from the book and replay the movie constantly.
Push off, and sitting well in order smite
The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Of all the western stars, until I die.
It may be that the gulfs will wash us down:
It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,
And see the great Achilles, whom we knew.
Tho’ much is taken, much abides; and tho’
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven; that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield."
— Excerpt from Ulysses by Lord Alfred Tennyson.
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Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet
