Girlfriend shows you 2 red lines and the first thing you notice is the deathly, icy cold feeling at the back of your neck. Trust me, even if it was planned, you tend to forget everything when you hear the words, “I’m pregnant.” Paired with tears of uncertainty swelling and the all-time favorite script, “What are we going to do now?”
Of course you don’t have the answer to that question. Not yet. You still have to switch to zombie mode, decide to go home to step back a bit and think about the situation only to be annoyed because it felt like it only took 10 minutes for the usual 45-minute ride. You haven’t even formulated a plan yet how to tell your parents about it! This is the part where you start to grasp the idea that it is not really a sign of weakness to open up to your friends. You know, get drunk and a bit of crying here and there. Basically, the end is near. From the usual Friday night-outs, online games, gadgets – anything that literally makes you spend 80% of your salary the day after YOUR PAYDAY, you will have to discard because you need to prepare for the greatest and most challenging adventure of your life that even Frodo would thank the heavens for the rest of his life because he just had to keep one ring safe and only lost a finger in the end. Here in this journey however, you will have to surrender everything.
And before you even know it, there you are, simply continuing the cycle. Your life has changed the moment you took that paternity leave.
After a few months, you learn to baby talk and can practically write a book full of it. Then you allow your room to be hijacked sometimes ending up sleeping in the living room. Instead of the game installers, you now have loads of interactive videos for toddlers in your 1-terabyte BACKUP hard disk drive. Heck you don’t even know where your consoles are anymore. A little bit of crying, and you panic. There is also this familiar frustration setting in when you went above and beyond to comfort your child and nothing good ever came out of it. You patiently spend a lot of time teaching your child to speak ‘Daddy’ first instead of ‘Mommy’. You have to beat your wife to it although she doesn't really care. Oh, don’t forget the much dreaded diaper-changing sessions and who’s better at it. Trust me, there is no competition there. No father ever enjoyed changing diapers.
At work, topics have shifted. Not so long ago, you and your co-workers only talk about dogs, cars, bikes and how hot the new hire is. Now, it’s all about how you found the toy chicken in your bag, the spoon in one of your jacket’s pockets and how you lost hours of unsaved reports because the laptop was ‘accidentally’ restarted. What’s disturbing is you find all these hilarious. Not to discount the countless images of your child in your phone, laptop wallpapers and the cropped Facebook profile pictures.
You see, no one is born ready. Not even those who were literally hard-pressed with responsibilities at an early age. You have to actually go through a certain level of conditioning like a soldier; drilled physically, technically and psychologically, to be effective. Absolutely no shortcut to all of that. In case you noticed, I was only blabbering about the first 2 years.
For a man to experience the joy of being a father – that most wonderful feeling that can send you kneeling and thanking the Lord every single day for allowing you to experience that chapter of your life – walk a mile in your own father’s shoes.
