The Arrival

It is almost 3 a.m. 

I have warm coffee in paper cup next to my portable studio here at the hospital. I am exhausted. Racing to meet a couple project deadlines. Am listening to The Dodos with one ear and our son, six feet away in bassinet, with the other. Those grunts and dwarf-coughs are my midnight Chopin. 

He arrived Monday at 8.57 a.m.
8 lbs, 4 oz.

He is unnamed thus far, and we do not apologize. He will be titled soon. And his name will be a Saville Row fit.

I have been thinking a lot about what it means to have a son. To have a boy. It will be a different experience (duh). But I also know the expectations people have of how you should, or will, behave as a father when you have a specific gender...

Congratulations on having a girl...just wait til she's a teenager, you'll be on the porch with a shotgun!

And I want to say No, actually that is incorrect. And outline the reasons for why I do not dread my daughter's teenage years. At all. But most of the time, I keep my mouth shut. Because people say those things as conversation shortcuts; as cliche, undeveloped slices of folk wisdom that seem right because they have remained in perpetual historic motion. Most people are not using those snippets of pseudo-wisdom as conversation starter. They are using them as conversation substitute.

I am so excited about having a son. And, I am so excited about our daughter having a brother. I am so excited about the myriad of relationships that will spring up around him - father/son, brother/sister, son/mother...grandparents, uncles, aunts, cousins, friends...permutations of all the people around him who are important. Starting with the four of us.

And we are going to have a good time. Guaranteed.

Why guaranteed? Because I believe in the power of priming. You prime yourself for a situation, and you affect how that situation will develop by the attitude you take into it. You expect success. And by expecting success, you help create success. It is not hocus-pocus, anymore than the concepts of love, or loyalty are supernatural - those qualities may be ephemeral, and difficult to describe, but they certainly exist. And they become real when you look in the rear view mirror and look how the decisions you made along the way led to where you are now. 

And where we are now with this version, on life's autobahn, is Milepost Zero. A Family with Love, in our little mixed-metaphoric bohemian houseboat. Love, loyalty, mischief, and magic. And those elements will be quadratically multiplied with the addition of Little Man Long. I am going to love being Dad to a boy, because I expect I will. And my expectations are that I will build my own expectations, not take the lackadaisical route of letting culture and history dictate what it means to be a boy, or a Dad.

My priority list has headline font.

We are going to have so much fun. Rock and roll, as Magdelana says.

I am tired, and am not quite sure what I just wrote. C'est la vie...et au revoir!