Exposed: The Virus of Fatherhood

My last blog is seven months old. Lots of things have happened and I wish I had written more, recorded more, reflected more. The process of writing about being a father has helped me tremendously in coming to terms with questions, doubts and riddles I have had to confront about fatherhood and myself as a father. My last blog was particularly helpful to me in that I took the risk of being honest in a way I hadn't been honest before. It brought me further along the journey of fatherhood and of understanding a kind of crazedness that took hold of me in the wake of being "exposed" to a new baby. But I have to admit that it also undermined, if not destroyed, a more idyllic picture some others had of fatherhood and of me as a father. It probably destroyed my own idyllic view of fatherhood and myself as a father.

Lying awake on a recent camping trip with my three sons, with Gabriel my youngest sleeping tightly nestled into the curve of my body, my mind kept being pulled into a maelstream of thoughts about my experience as a father. It was a stream that, at times, seemed to take my breath away. The thought that kept coming back, the thought that made breathing possible, though not easy, was this one: "But I only wanted to help! I wanted to help her, Leslie, my wife. I wanted to be a good husband, a thoughtful partner. I wanted to disburden her, make it easier for her." Certainly I wasn't thinking anything along the lines of "I want to be a good father." It didn't even cross my mind. And when a good friend and her husband visited the day my oldest, Noah, was born and greeted me warmly with the word "daddy," I balked telling her in no uncertain terms that I was still Martin and not to be called by this new function that had recently been bestowed on me. Little did I know that, already at that moment and increasingly so in the next months and years, I would be continuously exposed to the virus of fatherhood. I had no idea that I would undergo one of the most effective forms of brain-washing and change of mental attitude I can think of.

Before I go into more detail about the ways in which I was exposed let me briefly describe how as a culture we help men avoid exposure: a) we tell them that there sperm is nothing but a minimal contribution to the life of the baby; b) we discourage them from showing up for prenatal visits; c) we enoucrage symbolic fatherhood (catching the baby, cutting the cord) but discourage actual fatherhood (doctor's visits, diapering, feeding, meetings with teachers, etc.); d) we make sure fathers go back to work no later than two weeks after the baby's arrival; e) we foster a complex system of concepts that is based on the distinction between a primary and a secondary caregiver (i.e., making the father as the secondary caregiver less important); e) we continue to depict fathers as incompetent buffoons who smear themselves with shit as they try to change a diaper, who vomit at the smell and/or sight of a full diaper who handle the child like a foot-ball, who sleep through the baby's crys at night; f) we tell father to run for cover as quickly as possible. Culturally we do everything we can to inocculate fathers against fatherhood. It is a miracle (or is it testimony to the strength of the virus?) that more and more fathers are catching on to fatherhood. And they're not only catching on to it as a concept. No, they're experiencing it as a truly life-changing, personality changing, relationship changing process.

So, what happened to me? How was I first exposed? Well, there are plenty of "story-moments" to recount: reading to my first-born in utero, feeling him kick my hand in utero, looking deeply into his eyes seconds after he was born, cleaning him after he was born, hearing his voice for the first time, and and and. All of these are photo-op moments from a story perspective. They look like so many photos in so many fathers' albums. But I'm not convinced they really did to me what I call "exposure" or even "brain-washing." Many fathers have these moments and, still, soon fall into a more distant relationship. Too many fathers walk away (or are walked away) inspite of these experiences. These moments are not enough to create the kinds of bonds that are needed to keep a relationship going and growing. In the same way that a family picture may not be a realistic representation of the family, these moments are not a realistic representation of the father-child relationship.

What really got me "hooked" was continuous care for my son. The circumstances of Noah's birth (viz. I had just become a graduate student again, we were used to living with very little, my wife was dealing with the beginnings of (post-partum) depression) gave me time and forced me to step up to the plate of continuous care of my child. That is when and how I became a father. Night after night of lying with him, holding him on the couch (just like Gabriel was lying next to me in the tent), soothing him to sleep, often with my finger in his mouth (as he would only suck on Leslie's breasts or my finger, not a pacifier). Hoping, too, that Leslie would find some rest and sleep (yes, during those first nights and days, my taking care of Noah was still very much guided by the idea of "giving mom a break.") Day after day of putting on him those bulky cloth-diapers, cleaning them out, washing them, hanging them up in our back-yard (four lines of lightly stained rectangular pieces of white cloth billowing in the wind). Day after day of pushing him in a stroller to a near-by park and, there, doing the same things (the things he liked) over and over again. And, not to forget, having him on me in the sling virtually anywhere I was going. Noah accompanied me to the store, to teach, to study and even to mow the lawn.

My exposure to Noah, in other words, was relentless. At some point it caught. I realized I could no longer step away from the plate. Nor did I want to. What seemed like a responsibility at first, something I had to do to make things easier for someone else, had turned into something so routine, natural and joyful that I would not for a second think about giving it up anymore. So, when our second son Jacob was born two years later, my exposure to Noah had formed me in a way that seemed irreversible. For one, my sleep-patterns had changed. I was sleeping very lightly, waking up at the slightest stir from either of my sons. I also had begun to snore quite badly (likely a side-effect of the light sleeping patterns and my exhaustion).

About six months after Jacob was born I took them both to Europe to visit my family and to celebrate my grandparents' sixtieth wedding anniversary. A unique experience in so many ways, but especially in as far as spending time with my sons was concerned. We were together virtually the whole time. They relied on me completely and the bond and need for that bond became even more reinforced. My state of exposure only increased. It was during this trip that I recognized for the first time a secondary pattern of exposure, viz. that I was seeking it out rather than just passively receiving it. I wanted to feel the pull that comes from my sons, wanted their trust in me as their provider, protector and loving father. It was a kind of wanting that goes beyond the mere expression of a wish. Rather, it's the kind of wanting that comes in response to a felt lack. I was missing something, missing being with my children. And so I sought out as many moments as possible to be with them. It hardly felt like a choice anymore.

Gabriel was born seven years later. My sense of wanting to be with my children was still there, but it had also changed significantly. This change was about choice. Over the years, wanting to be with them had changed into choosing to be with them, and, more important, choosing to be with each other. Their ability to choose, i.e., their ability to be independent, added the joy of a mutually willful and mutually intentional being together. Gabriel's birth felt confusing. The old sense of passive exposure to something I couldn't avoid came back fast. There was no choice in it, only a magnificently powerful pull towards him. No longer was the question even one about "helping" Leslie. Rather it was about the sweetness of the connection with Gabriel, the sweetness of my submission to his presence. But, despite the clarity I have achieved about this now, it felt deeply confusing at the time. A kind of partum experience seemed to take hold of my relationship with all three of them. With Gabriel it was the old, and somewhat familiar sense, of wanting to be with this baby. But with Jacob and Noah it was a new sense of parting that had to do with me being pulled back into a relationship with their baby-brother while, at the same time, releasing them into a greater and wider realm of independence. I was becoming afraid of losing them all. That night, when Leslie and I wrestled over who should hold Gabriel, was, for me, about that fear. A primordial sense of my own passing role as a father, a sense of my eventual death and my sons needing to be in the world without me, a sense of needing to cling to my son(s) and never give him(them) up took hold of me more powerfully than I had ever experienced it before.

Why does nature do this to us? Why does this process come as the promise of "forever" only to quickly morph into "for a while?" And, if this has to be so, how are we to bear the pain of this change? For me this pain has never (and, I suspect, will never) resulted in discouraging my sons from being independent. I am not a "clingy" father. But my exposure to this virus cannot be made undone. Below my jubiliations about their bountiful steps towards self-sufficiency I often hear the grieving tone of a another voice. It is about a man who is still deeply connected to his sons and who will not stop feeling the depth of that connection. It's about a man who sometimes finds himself with the odd and very sad thought of his sons being without a father when they themselves are old and fragile.

A last reflection coming from the philosophical corners of my brain; it is about the term "virus." I have asked myself, why I chose to describe fatherhood in terms of a disease. It wasn't until I was already in the middle of writing that something about that word occurred to me. The word "virus" and the word "virile" have a common root: vir. This root is a Latin word for "man." Is it possible that exposure to this virus is about our manhood? Is this virus perhaps undermining our manhood in one way and rebuilding it in another? Being exposed to the virus of fatherhood, then, would be the ultimate process of "deconstruction." It would be a destruction coequal with a construction. In becoming fully exposed and attached fathers we are becoming different and new men.