first lucid thoughts from a new parent

I wrote the piece below when D was 10 weeks old (he's now almost 8 months), but in honor of a dear friend who's getting ready to birth her baby, I thought I'd post it here. It's amazing how much has changed since I wrote these words. Well mainly, we're getting more sleep and feeling much saner--ha ha ha.


My husband B and I were recently watching the latest film in the Star Trek series, while our 10 week old son napped peacefully upstairs. The movie opens during an inter-galactic struggle between good and evil, with the good guys appearing as the obvious underdogs.  Overpowered in every way, the Star Fleet ship loses its captain and a young man gets thrust into the captain’s chair and a fate for which he did not ask.  Due to a technical malfunction the newly appointed leader chooses to remain aboard so the others can flee safely.  In a touching three minutes of storyline he communicates with his wife while she gives birth to their son in an escape pod, before careening to his death.  He served as captain for only 12 minutes and in that time saved over 800 lives, including that of his wife and newborn son. 

B and I had already seen the movie two other times, but this time, we both couldn’t help but cry.  Laughing self-consciously we exchanged Kleenexes. “We’ve never cried before at this scene,” I said to him while dabbing my eyes.  “We didn’t have a son before,” he replied softly.   “What leadership, what courage, what sacrifice…” he continued.  I believe it caught us by surprise: the wellspring of emotion pricked by a science fiction movie.  And yet in the midst of the exhausting, mundane day we had just had, it felt like something more real and true than either of us had experienced in awhile.  It also felt like a depiction of a change we both knew had occurred in our inner selves but hadn’t the word count or the mental dexterity to articulate. 

Our son’s arrival was requiring a new level of leadership and sacrifice for us both, as well as a level of courage we didn’t know we’d need.  As my thoughts drifted throughout the rest of the movie, I found them resting on marriage.  Perhaps that was due to our attendance just two days prior at the wedding of good friends.  Indeed I realized a few times after the wedding that I kept day-dreaming about them—on their honeymoon, at the beginning of their journey.  I guess I wasn’t day-dreaming so much about them really, as about me and us.  About our beginning that felt so long ago.  Eleven years is a long time. It’s one full decade and just past the starting gate of another.

The honest truth is, despite the emotional outburst during Star Trek, B and I had been having a hard time the last few months.  During the weeks leading up to our son’s birth, and most definitely after, we were stripped of all the carefully constructed coping mechanisms both of us had erected over 30 years.  Literally prevented from recharging, re-assessing or even escaping, we felt trapped in an intense, twenty four hour battle with everything.  That may sound a tad dramatic, but I think other new parents can attest to the war zone that is the first few months of infancy.  No sleep plus total chaos plus utter confusion equals irrationality plus total fatigue plus panic.  None of those sound like the ingredients for a thriving marriage. 

The fact that we had eleven years of doing life together before having kids seemed like both a blessing and a curse.  After all we were veterans now and just the road to having a family had brought enough crises to last decades.  On the other hand, that’s a substantial amount of time to establish rhythms, patterns and mutual expectations.  Now there was a screaming infant in our mist who couldn’t communicate what exactly he needed and I was a virtual bi-polar, schizophrenic with a mountain of insecurity to climb every time my head left the pillow in the morning.  B, someone who placed a high value on self-control, was beside himself at all the chaos around him and in him and struggled to find his footing in the emotionally charged arena that was now our home.

Now, back to Star Trek, leadership, courage and marriage.  So there I was pondering all these topics while B kept inching the volume up louder and louder, and our once peacefully sleeping son now flailed wildly on the monitor screen.  “Why do we do this?” I heard myself ask.  Why do we get married, have kids, and thereby quit sleeping and surrender order?  “Because it requires everything,” I heard an inner voice reply.  Hmmm, that’s interesting.  It seemed to me that there existed a profound, deeply-rooted inner drive in mankind to acquire and maintain fullness—fullness of heart, spirit and body.  Kind of like we all want that full feeling we get after a good meal sitting in our core, helping us feel satiated, restful, safe.  Indeed, think of the opposite scenario: you’re at a function or lost on a car trip, with no food and the onset of hunger pains.  Next thing you know you feel total panic and even fear.  Have to get to food!! You think crazily over and over.  And so many of us, for fear of that situation either literally or metaphorically, constantly try to keep ourselves full so that we don’t have to feel hungry.  We’d rather have that post-holiday-meal sensation then the stuck-in-traffic-haven’t-eaten-all-day one. 

At the same time I haven’t met a person who doesn’t desire at some level, to be totally given over to something.  I have met people who have found those “something’s.”  A good example would be missionaries.  I’ve conversed with a number of missionaries, all who regardless of their physical state, have a look in their eyes that says they’ve given it all—resources, time, energy, life blood.  I have to believe that level of dedication and self-sacrifice isn’t reserved only for those who live in hostile environments on the other side of the globe.  Indeed, I got a hostile environment at my local grocery store.  I don’t mean that flippantly, I’m being serious.  Enter any major metropolitan grocer and I guarantee you’ll observe a front line of sorts.  I’ve never seen so many irritable people confined to such a small space.  To make matter worse they’ve been given weapons: monstrous, metal carts.

Anyway, back to the issue at hand.  So what does all this mean?  I don’t exactly know, but I feel like this thought process leads somewhere.  I know for me, I seem to constantly struggle with the simultaneous desire to be completely full and yet totally emptied.  In the Bible, Jesus says that he has come that we may have life and have it to the full.  Yet the apostle Paul talks about being emptied to the last drop.  I want both of these: Jesus’ promise of a full life and Paul’s experience of being totally emptied for a greater cause.  Wow.  And then it hits me: the man sitting next to me on the couch and the little feller squirming in his crib on the monitor screen represent both of those to me right now.  Doing life with my soul’s companion had already given me a fullness I never expected or knew to dream, and yet learning to walk alongside him has also required bittersweet surrender.  Now a precious little man was asking for even more. Yet, in his new smiles and delighted giggles I feasted. 

The movie credits rolled across the screen and I went upstairs to get our feller for his feeding. B called after me, asking if I’d like him to prepare the bottle.  I smiled to myself and told him that’d be great.  Here we were, at a new beginning.  We may not be in the tropics sipping mojitos to mark this beginning, but in the midst of dirty diapers, formula-stained clothes and late-night feedings, we were finding ourselves both full and empty.