Metamorfathis
Pophood changes a feller. Perhaps books have been written on the subject.
I'm sure the distance of the last nine months has had a lot to do with it, but Ryan has always been this baby person. Even, on some levels, my baby person. But it has only recently, gradually, occurred to me that this lad is my son. It's weird and vaguely unexplainable. Obviously. I'm sure a lot of it has come out of our more recent interactions, especially with Mommy off getting her feet scraped or whatever women do in salons, but I am becoming a father to this boy.
But more is happening to me. In class this week we watched a "60 Minutes" video about North Korea that showed their dilapidated infrastructure and starving children that a year ago wouldn't have made a dent. But the video also showed babies, and something in me just twinged that never had before watching television.
And Monday, a Major in our group was promoted to Lt Col. He had his parents there, and a close friend with his wife and two kids (his own family is in Belgium). The promotee had asked for someone to watch the kids in the back of the room during the ceremony, so Dennis and Alston had volunteered, but as the ceremony started, the girl, somewhere between 2 and 3, started fussing in her stroller and started demanding, in a Colonel's-speech-distracting way, for her release. Alston complied, but she immediately ran around the chairs in front and hugged the promotee around the leg, yelling "Uncle Roger!"
Later, after being carried screaming out of the room by her mother, the girl was back in Alston's charge, kneeling on a "big people" chair, bouncing around on it as it wobbled, leaning WAAAY over towards her face to reach a Marine hat on the floor ... and I just couldn't concentrate --This New Father Was Worried For the Kid.
Plus Uncle Roger's speech was boring as hell and eighty-five times too long and was keeping us from our mid-way-through-the-course party.
I'm sure the distance of the last nine months has had a lot to do with it, but Ryan has always been this baby person. Even, on some levels, my baby person. But it has only recently, gradually, occurred to me that this lad is my son. It's weird and vaguely unexplainable. Obviously. I'm sure a lot of it has come out of our more recent interactions, especially with Mommy off getting her feet scraped or whatever women do in salons, but I am becoming a father to this boy.
But more is happening to me. In class this week we watched a "60 Minutes" video about North Korea that showed their dilapidated infrastructure and starving children that a year ago wouldn't have made a dent. But the video also showed babies, and something in me just twinged that never had before watching television.
And Monday, a Major in our group was promoted to Lt Col. He had his parents there, and a close friend with his wife and two kids (his own family is in Belgium). The promotee had asked for someone to watch the kids in the back of the room during the ceremony, so Dennis and Alston had volunteered, but as the ceremony started, the girl, somewhere between 2 and 3, started fussing in her stroller and started demanding, in a Colonel's-speech-distracting way, for her release. Alston complied, but she immediately ran around the chairs in front and hugged the promotee around the leg, yelling "Uncle Roger!"
Later, after being carried screaming out of the room by her mother, the girl was back in Alston's charge, kneeling on a "big people" chair, bouncing around on it as it wobbled, leaning WAAAY over towards her face to reach a Marine hat on the floor ... and I just couldn't concentrate --This New Father Was Worried For the Kid.
Plus Uncle Roger's speech was boring as hell and eighty-five times too long and was keeping us from our mid-way-through-the-course party.
posted by Dan at 7:36 PM
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