Hawaii.
Hawaii?
How are ye?
It's time for Vicky and I to leave. Tomorrow morning, we'll be on the plane. We'll be celebrating our six-month anniversary in Hawaii. (Our one-year anniversary will be spent in some other exotic place... like Azusa...)
It's going to be pretty slow around here for a few days so I thought I'd get a few things off my mind before I leave.
BOOKS
Those of you who asked for copies to review should be receiving them soon.
Trish hasn't finished No More Blue Roses, yet, but she did tell me that she liked it so far. Other than that, she's making me suffer... and that's fun. Once I get the full scoop, I'll let you know for good or ill.
The new book, which I have all of 2500 words to and am thus far calling UM, has stalled. I don't think it's dead, yet, even if it should be. I reread what I had and even I could see a huge problem. The problem? No heat.
Books need heat, passion, something to keep you on your toes - otherwise, there's reality TV, ya know? The book was supposed to be about a man facing his fears and, in 2500 words, was nothing more than a man dealing with irritations... no. This isn't unfixable. I just need to go back, turn up the heat and let it go.
But better to see this now than 90,000 words later!
MOM
My family and I have never had the most solid ground on which to stand. My mother, brother, sister, and I were at odds from the minute my dad walked out when I was five and the years didn't help any. There are times when things are good and not so good and downright crappy.
Things have been good.
They're going to crappy.
Here's the thing: My mom is sure I'm going to burn in hell. She's none too pleased about this so she's decided to try and convert me. But rather than flood my inbox with religious spam - thank GOD she hasn't figured out how to do that... yet - she's filling my mailbox with evangelism by proxy.
Not only do I think she's wasting her money - money she doesn't have to waste - but I can't help think it's rude and disrespectful. I mean, I don't send her pamphlets on Buddhism; I don't want to see the mass marketing of the END TIMES in my mailbox.
My family has never been great at confrontation - I mean, ever. I've asked my mom to stop her campaign to hook me up with Jesus but, sadly, I think that will probably result in her distancing herself from me. We've done this before and I guess we're going to do it again.
Did I ever say I came from a normal family?
PILL
Don't you love these one-word titles?
Well, it's official. Vicky's off "the pill".
She told me this last night and laughed out loud at the look on my face. Now, I think I've come quite a ways in accepting this new stage that will be coming, understanding the responsibility we'll soon have, overcoming my fear of what might happen - you know, that I might generally suck as a father, something history has proven for the men in my family - but hearing this news was very much akin to... nothing else I'd ever experienced.
(And, mind you, we'd discussed this!)
Terror? Sure. Fear? Of course. Paranoia? Well... But then, there was also this giddy kind of feeling. We're actually doing it! We're going to make a baby!
Mind you, it didn't help that I've only recently learned about Tay-Sachs. Tay-Sachs is a birth defect that, thanks to my lineage, I may be carrying. I need to get tested for it! Sure, the odds are so small that there were no reported cases in 2004, but still!!!
And then Tay-Sachs led my mind down the road to Cystic Fibrosis, Down Syndrome, and on and on and on... my ex-wife gave birth to a child whose one side of her face stopped growing! They had to break the baby's skull to stretch it and make it fit the other side!... Birth defects led to everything that could happen after the baby was born - after the baby was walking - after the baby was... and on and on...
Is it any wonder I couldn't sleep much last night.
Vicky says I worry too much. She's probably right. But what's more compelling for worry than the responsibility of another's life?
Billie gave us some "What to Expect when you're Expecting" this past weekend. I plan to read everything I can. I'm good at that. Reading and Worrying.
Vicky will read, too. And she may do a little worrying. Mostly, though, she'll look at me like I'm crazy.
It's time for Hawaii.
Aloha.
1 comment:
Hey, I think my mom gave Billie that "What to expect when you're expecting", expecting that Billie and Dan would procreate...and well, we see how far that got.
As for your fear of being a father, I don't know you from adam really. Never met you have only read your blog and know that Vicky couldn't possilby have picked a loser to father her children so I say this...Be yourself! Which is, in and of itself frightening I know. The other piece of wisdom I can pass on - since I don't have children - is we tend to live what we believe. So whatever the "men in your family" did or didn't do, you have COMPLETE control over changing that pattern.
Go to Hawaii. Be a dad. And Be good at it.
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