Once I Believed

“You can watch if you want,” the nurse told me.  “We can keep the curtain down or put it up so you can’t see anything.”

She was talking about the curtain that was draped across my wife’s shoulders as she was prepped for the emergency c-section that would deliver to us our first child.  After a week of labor, we were finally there.  It wasn’t going to happen naturally, with or without an epidural.  And I was offered the opportunity to watch.

“Uh. No,” I replied.  “I could watch it on TV, but I don’t think I can watch you slice my wife open and bring my son into the world.  Put it all the way up.”  They did, and a short time later the little guy was wailing and he was placed in my arms.

A few hours earlier, my wife experienced an adrenaline rush that left her whole body shaking.  The shaking continued through the c-section and was still evident when the nurse brought him to us.  I asked my wife if she wanted to hold him.  She demurred because of the shaking.  So, I got the honors.  I held him and spoke to him and dreamed of all the things that were to come.  I went with the little guy as he was weighed and poked and prodded and then returned to me to hold once again.

And I believed.  I believed, for the first time in my life, that everything was possible. That life was endless and optimistic and happy and that love knew no bounds.  I believed in all of it, as he squirmed and settled into my arms and I was able to quiet him and wait for his mother to be sewn up and delivered to this new family unit.

I believed.  In love.  Unconditional, uncontained, wild love that could conquer anything.

A few nights later, we were home and we had our first rough night with him.  My wife was still recovering from her c-section, so I took on the middle of the night responsibilities.  He woke up.  He was inconsolable.  She nursed him.  I took him back. He still cried and screamed.  I walked him.  I rocked him.  I sang to him.  I held him this way and that way.  And it all ended when I stuck the end of my pinky in his mouth and he sucked himself back to sleep.

I went out and got pacifiers for him the next day.

And I believed.  In all of the possibilities that life and love had to offer.

A couple of years later, his little brother came along and I continued to believe.

…….

This is a bit of fan non-fiction inspired by Here I Am by Jonathan Safran Foer.  The book is about a family that grows up and grows apart.  The husband and wife decide to separate and ultimately divorce.  While the narration switches back and forth between the two of them and the kids and other characters for a portion of the story, at some point it focuses on the husband/father.

Towards the end of the story, as Jacob Bloch looks back on all that has gone right and wrong with his family, he ruminates on what the birth of his children did to him and his belief.  It’s what inspired me to remember my own belief.

At Julia’s second sonogram, we saw Sam’s arms and legs. (Although he wasn’t “Sam yet,” but “the peanut.”) So began the exodus from idea to thing. What you think about all the time, but can’t — without aids — see, hear, smell, taste, or touch has to be believed in. ONly a few weeks later, when Julia was able to feel the peanut’s presence and movements, it no longer only needed to be believed in, because it could also be known. As the months progressed — it turned, kicked, hiccupped — we knew more and more and had to believe less.  And then Sam came, and belief fell away — it wasn’t necessary anymore.

But it didn’t fall away completely. There was some residue. And the inexplicable, unreasonable, illogical emotions and behavior of parents can be explained, or partially explained, by having had to believe for the better part of a year. Parents don’t have the luxury of being reasonable, not any more than a religious person does. What can make religious people and parents so utterly insufferable is also what makes religion and parenthood so utterly beautiful: the all-or-nothing wager. The faith.

There is much more to this part of Here I Am, but this gives you an idea.

My wife is Jewish and I agreed to raise our children in her faith.  Seven days after our first was born we had the bris — our house was filled with family and friends present for his circumcision.  The mohel was there, my father-in-law held his grandson, and a party was held.  And I believed even more. Even if I wasn’t Jewish.

When they went off to school and we read books into the night.  And my oldest joined me on a fundraising bike ride to raise funds for a charity in honor of his uncle he never met. And I felt their soft, warm arms wrap around my neck.  And we laughed and lived our lives. They played baseball and soccer and wanted nothing more than to have fun and do things and see things and experience things.  And I saw their imagination and the things they thought.  And I believed even more.

As my boys grew and explored and learned, I continued to believe. All things were possible and love was all it would take. Surely this was the case.

Regular readers know I’m not a man of faith. I hold no religious beliefs. But having kids kindled a kind of faith. A belief that I never thought possible. Not inspired by a god or a supernatural thing or the words in a book, but just a simple belief in family and life and love.

What Jonathan Safran Foer misses, through the narration of Jacob Bloch, is that the belief and faith he describes is not unassailable or permanent.

As those little guys grow and the arguments build, the contradictions increase, and the disappointments mount … the belief weakens and the faith shatters. This is where I am these days. As my boys struggle with the transition to becoming young adults responsible for their lives, I’ve lost sight of the unconditional love I felt all of those years ago. I no longer believe that anything is possible with that love in place. I struggle to have faith. I wish it were otherwise.  I so wish it were otherwise.