I don’t think my wife and I are greedy people. The more living we do the more modest I find our wants are becoming. Perhaps we are growing to want little more than the things we truly need. It feels that way at least. We’ve lived in Vancouver for the better part of a year now and while we landed well we’ve always been aware of the temporary nature of our situation. Like many families (in our building and elsewhere) we live in a one bedroom apartment, my wife, my son, and I. In the spring our son will be two and we’re mindful of the fact that he’ll soon need his own room so we’ve long since started looking for a new place to live.

In many regards we have a lot. We have our health, we’re blessed with the richness of family, and we’re happy with each other. I’m always mindful of these things and extremely grateful for them. Nevertheless we do struggle to get by just the same as (I would say) most families out there. It’s a struggle that invariably leads to a near perpetual sense of insecurity about the future.

In Vancouver you don’t need to look far in order to be confronted by the seemingly infinite things you are supposed to want or the glamorous lifestyles you’re supposed to have with all their wealth and ease and excess. For everything you covet there’s always someone right there to rub it in your face that they have it and more importantly that you don’t. More insidious than overt excess though are the images we chase of normalcy, so far outside the reach of “normal” people. The biggest struggle it seems is learning that these desires were never yours and instead accepting your life for what it is while always striving for betterment.

I no longer believe that modesty is giving up on the dreams of your youth. It’s not about selling out or getting old man, it’s simply the fact that new dreams can come to supersede the old, that realities come wonderfully to replace dreams. Family, a home, food, health, a few simple things, the opportunity to pursue hobbies and passions for no other reward than your own, and the chance to develop joyfully mundane routines are the stuff of glory. This is my dream now.

If I have drifted in the wind as a seed full of potential, carried by the currents of my life, it is I think now the season of setting down roots and beginning the long process of working simply on the growing, perhaps one day to bloom, but for now to focus on the growing.

How quickly the time passes.  Why it seems just yesterday it was 2010 and now it’s already 2011 and I haven’t posted since November!  December was always going to be a hectic month and while I found some time to write I never got anything to the point where I was ready to share it.  I’ve heard several writers in interviews say that they didn’t know what they thought until they’d written it.  While I understand the sentiment about the clarity that comes from working through vague or incomplete ideas and turning them into a cohesive and coherent narrative, that explanation has always seemed to me to be an after the fact one, much too suggestive of ideas as accidental discovery or happenstance rather than laborious achievement.

I don’t know exactly what I’d say differently other than to say that far from discovering ideas in the results of some kind of automatic writing, it’s been my experience that it’s the process of writing itself in which ideas are constructed, deconstructed, and rebuilt into new forms.  Wait. That’s not quite right.  I could say that better. This is of course the feeling I am most often confronted with in re-reading my writing and the reason why so much of it remains “in progress” or draft form.  I’d written more here about my writing process as it relates to the site but it was all just a roundabout way of saying that I’ve been writing over the past month and I’ll be putting  it online shortly.

In the meantime I’ve been thinking about this site and how it hasn’t exactly gone the way I expected.  I think when I first came around to the idea of blogging about being a stay at home dad I envisioned something more along the lines of what someone else’ blog might be like.  I don’t know exactly what that image was like (which is probably why it hasn’t manifest itself in any specific way); more recipes or something I guess.  I suppose I contrived this site as the representation of a certain aspect of myself while omitting those elements that might seem less, I don’t know, universal?  Or maybe unique?  It’s not that there was really anything to hide but I think I was concerned that too much detail about myself would occlude what I felt were the shared aspects of and issues surrounding raising a child.

When I first set out on this little project there was really only one criteria: I wanted needed to write.  At the time I was just beginning the transition away from working dad to stay at home dad.  Where I thought that I was going to write cute stories about the day to day adventures my son and I had it soon became clear that there were more fundamental things weighing on my mind.  More than being at a crossroads of deciding into what and how I hoped the life of our family would develop, we, I in particular, felt I think as if we were standing in a vast field without any roads to guide us trying to decide which way to go.

As I wrote in those first few months the big ideas always related back to the little ones and the little to the big.  Everything ego-centric was always ultimately a questions about who I was going to be for my son and what I wished for him.  Already with the benefit of just these few months of hindsight I see the benefit of this effort.  I think it’s all too easy to get subsumed as a parent in the role and forget about your need to continue the work of being a fully formed and satisfied person in and of yourself.  Of course I mean this in balance.  Any parent believing that the best interest of their child is their own happiness is in my opinion sorely mistaken; the best interest of the child is first and foremost the happiness of the child.  Equally though if we as parents allow ourselves be so consumed by the role then we can easily lose any passion or sense of passion we so preciously want to convey to and instill in our children.  Obviously I don’t have the answers (if there are any answers to be had).  I think there are only ever premises under which we operate and that these are ever changing.  Thus I expect to be writing or a long time.

Going forward though I am going to make a concerted effort to be a more personal, to express more of myself as an individual and of our life, and to deal a little less abstractions.  Increasingly I am realizing that all those details about myself and my family that I thought made us different from other families are really the similarities between us.  Ultimately though this discussion of changing the content of this blog is really more about the evolution and growth that’s naturally apart of the writing process and I believe it’s greatest purpose.

Some people write only for readers the way that others speak only for the audience.  I write because I need to write.  It’s how I fully realize my ideas.  It’s how I chip away at the stone to reveal the sculpture beneath.  It’s how I quiet the noise otherwise threatening to hold me static.  I write because it’s how I look for and record change.  I write because I must and because, as I said, I don’t have the answers only a few premises more or less articulated and always, always in progress.

Such was the case last week while we were over helping my wife’s father with some of the renovations to his kitchen.  M had been a little uneasy all night with the mess (most of the kitchen having taken over the living room of their condo) and the occasional power tools.  He didn’t see his mum step out briefly to meet the pizza delivery guy.  “Momma.  Momma,” went a little voice down the hallway checking the bedroom, then bathroom and den.  “Momma,” he called questioningly while I tried to explain and reassure him that she’d be right back.

Not finding her in the den he walked back towards the kitchen disaster, not wanting me then or to come up, calling with a slight quiver in his voice, a faint moisture starting to accumulate around his eyes.  “Momma?” he called more quietly.  Just then my wife came back in, greeted by a very happy little boy.

If you could you’d spare your children every heartache in the world, but just every once in a while it is extremely gratifying to catch those hints of how much you are needed and loved so, so unconditionally.

More soon.

It was then completely heartwarming today when his response to her bye from the front door resulted in him yelling “Hug!” and coming running from the living room at top tottering toddler speed. That’s a big moment.

After dinner tonight while we were playing around he grab his large stuffed Elmo and took him over to the cabinet where we keep the diapers.  Reaching inside he pulled out the change mat and laid it out then lay Elmo down on it.  He grabbed the bum lotion and flipping the lid (before I could grab it from him) got the tiniest amount on his finger and began to rub it on Elmo.  Then grabbing a diaper he unfolded it and lay it over Elmo.  This kind of behaviour was totally new.

I helped fasten the diaper onto Elmo and M picked him up and began to carry him away down the hall towards the bedroom saying “Night, night.”  His mum followed him off into the bedroom and asked “Should we sing Elmo songs?” answered with a vigorous nod to the affirmative. So they sang Twinkle Twinkle as M held Elmo over his shoulder carressing his back.  “Should we put Elmo in the crib?”  Yes.  Night, night Elmo.

One day you’re shocked to discover that they aren’t just babies anymore.  They have these incredible little imaginations, and thoughts, and ideas that you even as their parents only get glimpses of and if you’re lucky get to watch play out in front of you.  It’s a fabulous, fabulous adventure.

I went to change M’s diaper tonight and discovered he had a really bad diaper rash across both inner thighs and his groin.  Even gently trying to wipe around the area it was clear that it was extremely painful.  There had been no indications of a rash or anything when I’d changed his diaper just a little earlier and he’d given no sign in between of discomfort.  Ever since getting his inoculations last week he’d been having pretty runny poops and tonight’s had been pretty bad.  But I can only guess that it was from that.

Everything goes through your mind when anything painful like that happens to your child.  The mind reels from plain old chaffing to flesh eating disease.  I wondered if it was something he’d eaten that he might be reacting to and quickly catalogued everything he’d consumed over the past several days.  Was there something wrong with the last diaper?  I’ve heard about people having problems with one brand recently and the chemicals reacting to the skin?  Whatever the cause, regardless of the cause, you’re pretty sure that it somehow qualifies you for the Worst Parent in the Universe award.  At least it feels that way.

Happy and healthy, those are your only jobs in life when it comes to your kids.  It doesn’t matter whether or not you know you can’t always succeed and that some things like rashes and colds and skinned knees (thankfully no colds or skinned knees today at least) and the like will happen, you nevertheless feel the failure of it regardless, and it’s crushing.

A few nights ago after a big day and a big dinner we were just finishing up our nighttime routine, a bottle and brushing teeth when all of a sudden and without any warning there was a little gag and a tiny bit of spit-up coming from his nose.  Instantly you’re on alert.  What’s going on!?  I stand up with him just in time for the onslaught of vomit, there’s really no other way to describe it.

In that moment you don’t really take any notice of the fact that you’re standing in your living room completely covered, soaked through with M’s dinner and a bottle of milk.  The only thought that passes through your brain is “can he breathe?” and panicked prayers to every atom in the universe that your child will be okay.

When I was twelve I got mono.  It’s kind of like having the flu, fatigue, achiness, and sometimes much worse.  It lasted a whole year.  For whatever reason it took several months and innumerable blood tests to figure out what it was.  It wasn’t until just a couple of years ago that my Dad told me that during that time before knowing it was mono that they thought it was leukemia.  My Dad’s wife lost her nephew at about that same age that I got mono, just a couple of years ago.  I don’t think you go on.

It’s quite simply the most terrifying fact of life that there are things that you can love so much, so desperately much that regardless of the at love can still be taken away from you.  Life is just so delicate, so wondrous yet horrifyingly fragile that the very thought of it’s tenuousness is incapacitating.

There are too many stories of loss, of senseless loss, of heartbreaking loss, of absolute and utter devastation stemming from the loss of a loved one.  This was demonstrated clearly enough just this past week for Remembrance Day as the CBC aired a two hour documentary (without commercial interruption) showing each of the one hundred and fifty two Canadian soldiers lost in Afghanistan with profiles on some and interviews with their families.  To lose a child at any age is unspeakable and I know I couldn’t survive it.

M is fine.  His rash should clear by the morning.  Five minutes after vomiting the other night he was running around again and laughing and quite plainly his happy boisterous self again.  I don’t think his diaper rash tonight was because of anything I did, and I think sometimes these things just come up on one parent’s watch or another.  Nevertheless, in the moment (and for the rest of the evening) what you feel is that it’s entirely your fault, that you’ve broken the trust to keep him safe, and you’re reminded that the abyss is real.

In these moments you feel helpless against the fragility of life.  What your fear is that it’s something worse.  Even if you don’t believe it, even if you know it’s not the case you fear it, irrationally, the way you might still fear the dark.  Irrationality in a rush of adrenaline, a chill running down your back, the sudden and unwavering certainty even if only for a moment that ghosts and monsters are real.

Shortly after moving to Vancouver in the spring M was really sick, throwing up a lot and having really awful runny poops.  He was lethargic, he lost weight (and us with worry), but ultimately he pulled through after the longest week of our lives.  We were at the clinic, we went to the doctors, we monitored everything and were constantly on guard.  It was as close as I ever want to come to knowing anything about fragility.

From the moment you first find out she’s pregnant and from then on for the better part of the next year all you want is to make it to that goal line of having a happy healthy baby; just arrive baby, just make it and be whole and we’ll go from there.  You’ll never want anything more than for the baby and mama’s health.  Then the kid’s here and they’re so small and all you want is for them to thrive, just thrive baby, just flourish.  You’ll say “please god,” a lot, and it won’t matter what you believed or didn’t believe before because you’ll spend a lot of time praying and bargaining with God, any gods, with anything that might have the slightest influence over existence.

Upon becoming a parent you’ll find yourself praying for the first time for just a normal life with a happy healthy family, and it will be more than enough for you.  Because on a night like this, with your wife and baby sleeping peacefully in the next room, with the bitter cold winds howling and thundering in the long winter darkness outside you are all to well aware of the fragility of life and the unending horror of the abyss for the survivors of death.

The feeling is of being full up, full to bursting with gratitude, with thankfulness, with love and an unsurpassed lust for life.  It is I think most closely called grace, maybe, possible something else.  Whatever the name it is a feeling that is sometimes fleeting, often whimsical, coming suddenly but each time a welcome surprise.  My son is my saving grace.  My wife is my saving grace.  My family is my saving grace, and I will gladly give thanks each day for the fear of such a terrible darkness to know so precious a light.