Nominated by Kevin from Always Home and Uncool, our August 9, 2008, winner
“I could let it spiral out of control and become the basket case I very much needed to be, or I could figure out how to buck up under pressure and be there for my wife and son… I kept it together. (It helps to be married to a saintly rock of stability.)”
The FTF focuses upon “the early morning, lunchtime, and late night musings and rants of a First Time Father.” The other characters in the author’s ongoing drama are the First Time Mother (FTM) and First Time Son (FTS). It is about the latter that he wrote on Thursday, July 10, 2008, defining for his readers The Real Meaning of FTF.
Once again, we focus upon a parent in crisis. However, in this instance, a suspected seizure made the world “fall out from under” the FTF.
After taking their then-one-month-old to the emergency room, the anxious first-time parents endured the worst agony of all: Waiting for test results. “It was like waiting at the DMV combined with sitting in summer Saturday traffic on the Garden State Parkway combined with watching the phone and waiting for a prospective employer to call you back…times 100 million. It was the Bataan Death March of waiting. (Side note: I used to think that was called the ‘Rattan Death March,’ but really, who would march themselves to death for bamboo furniture?)”
If entering the realm of parenthood requires some rite of passage beyond pregnancy and delivery, the FTF has survived the ritual and joined the ranks, eloquently articulating his new appreciation of universal parental devotion:
I learned that FTF doesn’t really stand for First Time Father; it stands for Full Time Father: As I stared at my son, … sang him to sleep … somehow managed to block out my own basic needs for sleep and nutrients, I knew with metaphysical certitude that I would do anything and everything to protect my son, to make him comfortable, to give him every chance to have a good — strike that — to have a great life. From here on out, there is nothing in my life that doesn’t somehow involve, even tangentially, the FTS. And as trying as the last couple of days have been, this realization makes me very, very happy.
Congratulations go to the FTF for his insight and understanding of precisely how much his life has changed — and will forever remain so — and for writing the Post of the Day in which he expresses his new-found wisdom.
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The first and most important lesson that I learned as a new dad was to sleep every minute you could. So many cries of distress at 3 A.M. and with a big proposal to present the next day at the office. I had to turn off the T.V., tune out the phone, and devote myself to being prepared. Being in stock on Pampers, baby powder, etc. is the easy part. Having the reserves of energy is what makes it work.
Rob’s most recent post..The Fudgsicle vs. the Million Dollar Bonus
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