Baby’s first bite of birthday cake

A little over a week ago, Sonny turned one-year old. The party was unlike any other in the McGuigan household. It started at noon. Rap music didn’t blare from the stereo. Cake was served on Sesame Street plates–and not ironically. No one got drunk and fell onto our coffee table. In fact, everyone–”just family,” Jaime insisted–was completely sober and mostly age-appropriate.

Before we had the baby, the most heard cliche from other parents was “everything changes.” Newer parents, a dull, frazzled twinkle in their eye, told us how little time they had for anything, how they were lucky if they made it out of the house without a puke stain on their clothing, how their child was basically a drooling kamikaze pilot. Parents of older children spoke with wisdom and encouragement, promised it’ll only get better and better, and then laughed like it was an inside joke we just had to be there for. Grandparents always were the most positive, having both the experience to speak with authority, the distance to forget the mythically awful teen years, and the knowledge that their grandkids eventually go back to their own homes.

For some, the change was good. They buckled down. Started careers. Figured out their priorities in life. Grew up. Others were wary. There was an adjustment period. They didn’t get enough sleep. Rarely cooked meals anymore. Never a moment to relax. And then, of course, there are the outliers, parents like Casey Anthony and whoever fucked-up Tila Tequila. The change certainly didn’t go well there.

Besides the tame party, there has definitely been an adjustment period for me. I’m up earlier everyday. I write less than I ever have. (If blogging for the first time in three months wasn’t an indication.) I’m not exercising as often. I stress about big things like being a good dad, money, The Future, instead of whether or not we have limes in the fridge for the Pacifico I picked up. We also don’t see our friends as often. Our home used to be the party spot, but we don’t entertain as much as we once did, and unfortunately, we can’t bring a one-year-old to a bar or stay out past 7 p.m. without him getting all “28 Days Later” on us.  Some of our friends without kids haven’t adjusted either. Sonny is a thumbed reptile to them, crawling and sliming on everything in his path. They forget our baby is not a pet. We can’t leave him at home with the dogs and go out for the night. It would help if we had a babysitter, but so far it seems they’re as ever-present as jackalopes.

Our little reptile!

Our marriage has changed, too. We’ve become business partners, two shareholders in the corporation that is our child. Our conversations are like meetings. There are agenda items–the daycare schedule, bed and bath time, what’s for dinner. Action items are agreed upon. Some matters are tabled for further discussion. Soon enough, we’ll be talking potty-training, school districts, saving up for his college fund. When the meetings are over, we clock-out, maybe there’s something on TV, a few minutes to catch up with the world online, then our own bedtime. We still communicate, but we talk less. We spend time together, but with so little of it, sometimes she just wants to watch “Top Chef”; sometimes I just want to read. We both miss our freedom, back when our lives weren’t so structured around Sonny, when our living room wasn’t a battlefield of toys ready to explode with the most obnoxious noises, when the only blow-outs we knew were on “Jersey Shore.” We have less time for ourselves and less time for each other. Like most parents, we do the best we can.

But neither of us have regrets. Despite the adjustments we’re forced to make, we both savor those special moments, the smile on Sonny’s face when he bounces up and down in our arms, hearing him shout “uh oh” each time he drops his pacifier, whenever he points at something in wonder and says “dah!” like he expects an explanation. What I didn’t have a little over a year ago was this great sense of meaning, knowing that for one adorably helpless boy I am one of two people he will always depend on, and in turn, I will always have an obligation to him. Plus, in a few years, I’ll have someone to play games with and watch sports. Jaime will have her own tiny sous chef. We both have someone who’ll make us be more thoughtful about our decisions, be more honest with ourselves about our place in the world, and we have each other to share that experience with for years to come.

There will be more change. Next year, Sonny will be able to blow out his own candles and get more cake in his mouth than on himself and the floor. Maybe we’ll have some beer, too, but none for the baby. He’ll have to wait a few  more years for that.

Bubble Wrap: It’s Baby Kevlar

1) Parents like to brag about their child’s milestones. Crawling, first steps and baby teeth are first-time parents’ trophies. We gasp. We smile with pride. We rush for our cameras.

But the truth is these milestones really are just more opportunities for our kids to die. Once Sonny started crawling, Jaime and I got down on all fours looking for potential death traps. We bought outlet covers (so he wouldn’t electrocute himself), a bumper for the cement-rimmed fireplace (so he wouldn’t concuss himself), and a baby gate (so he wouldn’t somersault down the stairs). Taking steps made Sonny even more adventurous, standing–and falling–while using the couch, the kitchen chairs, the dog’s face as a lean-to, opening cabinets and pulling out all of their contents, and, my least favorite, biting the toilet seat. Teeth, while adorable, only up the choking hazards, meaning the subtext behind my recent Facebook post, “Baby’s first tooth!,” is “Please don’t let anything in my home be made of parts small enough that they can lodge in a baby’s wind pipe!” It all makes me yearn for the larval days when Sonny was perfectly content sleeping against my chest while I watched football and wasn’t compelled to beat the remote against every hard surface in the living room, including his own head.

2) I assumed baby-proofing would also mean Brian-proofing. I didn’t think I had the motor skills or reason to solve the puzzle of the double outlet cover, and after walking through the baby-proofing section (Yes, section.) at Babies ‘R Us, I began accepting that I’d never be able to open another cabinet or door and would probably have to poop in the yard with the dogs. Those weren’t toilet bowl locks–they were medieval torture devices.

3) I didn’t want us to be those parents, the ones whose home turned into a prison–even if that prison had toys.

4) I thought I solved our baby-proofing problems when I made the suggestion to Jaime that we skip the gadgets and just cover Sonny in bubblewrap with holes for his mouth, nose, hands and feet, but she didn’t go for it. It could have saved us over hundred bucks in baby-proofing supplies and a near nervous breakdown (me, not her) due to the overwhelming nature of shopping at Babies ‘R Us, where the adults just barely outnumber the children, yet still I fear for my life.

Oh, Gallagher, if only you knew…

Several months ago, I went underground. I didn’t want to see anyone. I stopped returning most non-work-related emails and texts. I wouldn’t leave the house unless out of obligation or Jaime dropped her well-used “with your family” line–emphasis on “family,” drawn out, slow and steady, like blood through a needle–as in “Don’t you want to go for a walk with your family?” or “Don’t you want to spend a nice little Saturday shopping with your family?” Even if I wasn’t underground, I’d rather spend a Saturday watching a game–any game–than sitting on line while some pimply-faced dumb shit dials a price check on a kiddie pool and children swirl around me like sharks at a Gallagher show, if Gallagher ditched watermelons for carcasses. But when it’s your family, you sacrifice (“Yes, I hate nature, but I’ll go camping…”), you try new things (i.e. allowing someone, in this case, your eight-month-old, to punch you in the face over and over again while you are trying to sleep), you don’t collapse at the Babies ‘R Us check-out from a stress-induced stroke (“Now breathe, Brian…”). A few years ago, I’d believe Gallagher had a new, deathly schtick before I’d believe I’d be one of those guys, a family man.

For many, family means love, pride, happiness, and other words you’d see on those cheesy posters in office break rooms, but for me, family is a loaded gun, and each bullet is a fight over a dead relative, a gambling argument, a drinking problem, five years of unreturned phone calls and letters. If family were a Rorschach Test, I’d see tears, so many tears cresting at the peak of cheekbones and falling down faces, one after another. For me, family will always have the stale stink and metallic taste of ammunition and warfare, and staring down the barrel of that gun upon my son’s birth is what forced me underground in the first place.

Let’s see those hands, Mr. Family Man!

I didn’t understand what it meant to be a family man. I struggled with understanding what my role as a parent, as a father would be (besides, the obvious need-filler), and worried I would be one of those bad parents, whose kids end up in therapy for the rest of their lives, or worse, with faces of meth. I have never seen myself as a breadwinner, as the man who works all day and comes home to his chair, the clicker and a cold beer, while his wife bakes, takes care of the kids, makes home. My mother used to tell me, “You better marry a rich woman” because she didn’t think I wanted to work hard, but that’s not it entirely–I have just never wanted to work for someone else. And now here I was–new house, baby, wife on leave for six-months and then going back to work but only part-time. I needed to make the bread, for the family.

Quickly, I fell into a serious funk–and, by “funk,” I mean I didn’t want to leave the house because I felt so worn by the world. It started about a month after I returned to work from paternity leave in January. I couldn’t really find my groove, unable to fall into the routine I had before the baby, where meals were planned, meetings were calendared and work-outs were scheduled. The combination of a completely demanding job, a part-time obsession with writing, an almost everyday work-out schedule, which feels like a quarter time job, and the all-the-time job of fatherhood, of family, crushed me. There just weren’t enough hours in the day to do it all unless I slept on the train to and from work and the toilet–and that’s it! I couldn’t give my everything to any part of my life and slowly felt myself eroding from the pressure, mostly from myself because, to be honest, I have high expectations. I don’t expect myself to be great at everything, but I do believe I’ll work as hard as I possibly can to be the best I can be, yet I could barely muster the effort. Most days I could hardly get out of bed, curled up on my stomach waiting for this sadness, this frustration to stop pummeling me.

The hours of my job, most weeks easily 50 or more, the pace of nonprofit work, and my desire to be successful at it once energized me, knowing I’d be going to battle everyday for something, for people, I believe in, only when I returned to work, it felt like a battle I was losing, unable to maintain my compulsive approach to my job, which made me question my ability. In the last few years, I had received two grants to support my work, was listed as one of most influential people in the Seattle arts community by a glossy monthly and called “a whiz kid” by the local alt weekly, which also shortlisted me for its yearly arts awards. I wasn’t even thirty-years-old and had my dream job, the position I set myself to earning when I first discovered Hugo House.

“Fuck it,” I told Jaime on the verge of tears. “I’m just another tit for the world to suck on.” Suddenly, my dream job had become a nightmare, a time-suck where I helped other writers, some of whom I thought were very good but didn’t believe they had the ambition that I had, the working-class willingness to do whatever it takes. It didn’t help that I let my own writing languish, in part, because I was too busy helping so many other writers and often found myself wondering as I stared at a blank screen incapable of pounding out my own story–who the fuck is going to help me?

In the past, when my work-load became unmanageable and took away from my writing, working-out–and lots of coffee!–helped me keep up and stay positive, but now when I made it home, I was so exhausted and stressed out the thought of writing or doing anything that required any major mental or physical activity was sidestepped for Sopranos re-runs and the bottomless bunker of fantasy baseball analysis.

Some people talk of the muse like a partner you need to turn-on, get in the mood with some flowers, wine, fancy chocolate, but my creative process isn’t about romance–it’s about routine. I needed to wake up each day and inhale the bouquet of my muse’s morning breath, push back the tangled mass of her bed-head and kiss her soft lips beneath. Without routine, my writing process turned into a series of drunken one-night-stands where I was only left with regret the next morning, and with a larger project like “Fat Fuck,” I wouldn’t get anywhere unless I consistently sat down and pushed myself to write, revise, rehearse and re-live moments of my life that were once easier to drink and party away.

After not writing for months, I became what some might call “a moody fucking bitch” (And by some, I mean my wife…), trudging around the house with a grimace, making conversation almost exclusively in the tone of a barking dog and unable to open cabinets and doors without wanting to continuously slam them shut until the hinges snapped and the frames splintered. Eventually, I explained my affliction to Jaime through the only metaphor that could truly sum it up: “Imagine you haven’t taken a shit in three months. Every time you get on the pot, you push and push but nothing comes. How would you feel? That’s exactly what it’s like for me right now. I know I have to shit, but when I get on the pot, nothing comes. It’s so frustrating.” My writer’s block felt like a medical condition, something terminal, called a name I couldn’t spell and struggled to pronounce.

Are you looking at me, cabinet?

Working-out went the way of my writing, too. Before the baby, I was running three to four days a week, weight lifting three days, pulling two-a-days when a late afternoon run sounded relaxing, but I no longer had the energy, going through the constant existential debate of convincing myself I needed to work-out and then convincing myself otherwise–because I also needed to get to work, to write, to spend time with my family. When it came to each, I was failing myself and everyone else, a weight which over time was too much to bear for someone so dead-set on being the best that I could be.

After several weeks of self-hatred because I wasn’t the person I was before the baby came, because I no longer jumped out of bed every morning ready to fuck shit up and I wasn’t the super dad/husband I expected myself to be, I finally accepted the truth–I was depressed again.

But first I had to point fingers. I thought about quitting my job, about not writing anymore, about how being fat wasn’t so bad because at least I could eat ice cream everyday even though I was disappointed in myself every time I looked in the mirror. I had to be angry about the woe of grant deadlines, about how little I was writing, how “Fat Fuck” wasn’t worth writing anyway. And, of course, I blamed myself. I should have been able to do it all, and if I couldn’t, I should just suck it up and accept reality. I didn’t become the person I wanted to be. I was a family man now. If family was a loaded gun, then self-doubt was a ticking bomb strapped to my chest. I did the math–I was 30 already. Karen Russell and Tea Obrecht had already written bestselling debut novels before they were my age. Keats was prolific and dead by 25, and by the end of the 1800s, completely revered. All I had was a few publication credits, a couple of grants and more ideas than I had time to complete them–or even start them. Was I meant to be this breadwinning family man after all? Was my writing career over before it really began?

Recently, after seeking help to cope with my problems, “baby blues,” I’ve been told, I haven’t felt so bad, but some days, I look at myself in the mirror and answer “yes” to both of those questions, dejectedly, solemnly, with complete regret. Other days, I try to be thankful, to remind myself there’s so much more life, so much more fight, left in me, and I’ll find my place in it all as I’ve done before, although where that is I can’t say with certainty. I just have to trust, to step forward, knowing there will be more ground ahead.

I have never babysat my baby.

You should be fucking scared!

I can hear my baby cry when you don’t and can tune his tantrums out when you can’t. It’s like spidey-sense except I can’t also shoot webs from my hands or cling to most surfaces, though I wish I could because this baby’s about to start crawling, and those would be helpful skills.

My clothes almost always have puke stains on them.

I had to piss while feeding him because when I set him down or took the bottle away, he screamed as if being mauled by fire-breathing pitbulls. After I finished feeding him and he fell asleep full and happy, I cleaned the bathroom floor because my aim isn’t very good when I use both hands and was terrible when I tried the “no-look.” If I ever smell like piss, I will blame it on the baby, whether it’s his or not.

I know I should have shaved two days ago.

“I only eat babies!”

I am incapable of having a conversation where I don’t mention the baby, his smile, his crazy coos, the girth of his poop, how we call him “the vagina destroyer” or “the tiny dictator.” To put it in non-parent terms: it’s like if you just downloaded a really great album that you can’t stop playing and you want to tell everyone how great it is, burn it to CD for your friends, Spotify that shit and then post that you’re listening to it on Facebook. Now pretend it’s the only album you’ll ever hear again and it can never be paused.

I haven’t emailed you back because I can’t type while changing a diaper, raspberrying the baby’s naked belly or combing through Jaime’s hair for chunks of spit-up with a washcloth and when I’m not doing that, the baby is probably sleeping, and all I want to do is sit on the couch with Jaime and dull my brain with reruns of “The Sopranos,” DVRed episodes of “My Big Fat American Gypsy Wedding” and ESPN.com.

Breastfeeding isn’t an invitation to stare, ask questions, or roll your eyes. Babies can’t exactly pop a straw in the tit and feed themselves.

If you invite Jaime and I somewhere, the baby is always coming unless there’s an age or height requirement. Then we need advanced notice because six-month-olds cannot be left home alone–even if the dogs are there, too.

I will be late for everything because getting out of the house with a baby is like an episode of “Double Dare” where we always lose.

I finally cleaned up the hairball you noticed last time you were over. Every time I pass it I think, “I should clean that up,” but then the baby finds something more important for me to do.

Since you do not know, this is parenthood.

Mom, dad, go out. Have fun. Don’t worry. I got this.

I am not sorry.

For spending 95% of my non-work life in sweatpants or mesh shorts.

For half-listening to you while I was trying to keep the baby from jabbing an iPod charger into his mouth.

For judging you because you don’t try harder.

For being disappointed when you didn’t invite me to your birthday.

For thinking you should grow up.

For imagining you as a parent and feeling better about myself.

For being jealous that you saw “The Hunger Games” in the movie theater.

For believing you’d come over more often.

For assuming you’d care about my baby.

For wanting to wake you up at 7 a.m. on the weekends and stick your hands in a pile of shit.

For not vacuuming the dog hair on my couch that’s probably still on your jacket.

For wishing you would just listen to me bitch about everything that stresses me out.

I am not a superhuman. I am just someone who didn’t pull out because he believed in the power of birth control and was failed and then, with the person who he didn’t pull out of, made a decision to bring another person into the world. I need your support, your patience, your understanding.

“Rolling down the street in my Chicco sipping on breastmilk…”

If you have a baby, you’ll understand why I wish we hung out more. Maybe we can have a beer and keep our babies from sticking their toys in electrical sockets. Maybe we can listen to rap music while our babies are still too young to repeat the lyrics to “Gin and Juice.”

Let’s smell their butts together and smile when they don’t stink like shit.

And we won’t care if they fart in our faces because we both know there’s no other ass we’d rather have pressed against our noses.

We have no one else we care about more.

And we have little left to give.

Why don’t you say it to my face, Kermit!

1) Playing with a five-month-old is simple yet profound. Toys undergo three tests for Sonny: What does it taste like? What happens when he punches it? What happens when he bangs it against something else? It’s much less interactive than playing with a dog, but Sonny’s wonder when a toy undergoes each test and he discovers something about it, like when he slaps his meaty fist against Sophie the Giraffe and she lets out a squeak, which usually makes him smile, or when he bites on Kermit’s plastic eyes and realizes they’re hard, is far more impressive than anything my dogs can do.

2) At a recent staff meeting, my coworker Becky asked everyone to do their best over-the-top cheesy laugh, and I chose to do Sonny’s, a quick burst of guffaw that always makes his dimple shine and makes me smile uncontrollably. I love his laugh so much I spend most playtimes trying to make him “the haps”–baby slang for happy. First, the funny faces come out. Then, the snorting–he loves a good pig snort. If that doesn’t work, the raspberries kick in, on his belly, neck, feet, cheeks, any part of his chubby baby body that’ll earn me a squeal. Sometimes I have to take it a step further and pig snort and raspberry his armpits. If he’s not guffawing by then, he’s probably crying. That’s when daddy’s turned the baby from the haps to the sads.

3) Before you have a baby, nearly everything you’re told at the baby classes, by the doctor, or on the Internet is about how your child can be born fucked up or how you can fuck up your child. You learn about the horrors of SIDS, preeclampsia, genetic testing, and so many other potentially terrible things that on the most difficult days you’ll truly believe your future baby is absolutely doomed. But just when you think you’re bringing your child into a world that’s basically a deleted scene from “Mad Max” you’re reminded by the baby class teachers, the doctor, the comments section that you are participating in the miracle of life, the wonders of childbirth, as if that somehow makes you feel better about all the bad shit that can happen to the wee miracle who’ll turn your (or your partner’s) vagina into a placenta-spewing collapsing star.

But when your child is born and you look into that baby’s eyes and see this little you looking back at you, breathing, crying, everything’s okay. Maybe you’ll actually say it, or ask it, half question, half promise. With each visit to the doctor–the first, the two-week, the month, the second-month, the third-month–you’ll hear everything’s okay, and you’ll want to ask about anything that seems weird, that could be of alarm, and you’ll hear nothing to worry about. Everything’s okay. You’ll hear “strong,” “normal,” “healthy.” You’ll learn height, weight, head circumference. You’ll see stethoscopes, needles, tears. Everything’s okay, the doctor says, you two are doing a good job. You’ll hug your baby, naked and crying. Sometimes you just have to believe.

This is my mother’s legacy. More than twenty years ago, she systematically cut off communication with each of her six remaining brothers and sisters and eventually my grandparents with little explanation. When I’ve asked her why, her response has veered from the reasoned–a family squabble after her baby brother’s death when I was eight–to the hyperbolic–”You’ll never understand what they’ve done to me!”–but none of it ever seemed like a good enough reason to cut me off from the rest of my family before I was old enough to decide for myself.

As a boy, my grandmother was basically my surrogate mom, taking care of me after school, driving me to little league practice and Boy Scouts, always slicing my sandwiches diagonally, the way I liked them. My grandfather, far crasser than Grandma could ever be, was my father figure, teaching me the virtues of manhood from his chair, clicker in hand. My aunts and uncles, a motley assemblage of McGuigans, all played pinch-hit parent when my mother was working, giving so much of herself to her jobs the way I now do with my career, the other edge of the strong work ethic sword she’s passed on to me.

Over the last five years, my mother has cut me out of her life, too. It started with unreturned phone calls and emails, which later turned to letters and cards, each bearing more chat and history, catching her up on what she’s missed until I accepted that my mother can’t miss what she doesn’t wish to be part of at all. After two years, I wrote less and less and eventually gave up after sending her a picture of the baby’s first sonogram last Mother’s Day and never hearing back. In the card, I wrote, “I know we’ve had our problems, but I want you to be part of this baby’s life.” I was convinced her first grandchild would turn her around, and when it didn’t, I didn’t feel sorry for myself but for the little boy in Jaime’s belly who wouldn’t know either of his grandparents on my side of the family.

Then, in November, the week of my thirtieth birthday, a package arrived from a mysterious address with an all too familiar cursive. I knew immediately it was my mother, and when I opened the package sitting in Jaime’s car before our breastfeeding class, the box was filled to the brim with boy’s baby clothes, a short note where she said she knew the baby’s gender because “McGuigans produce boys,” and, at the very bottom, a Christmas ornament, my first Christmas ornament, dated 1981. Jaime asked if everything was okay, and all I could do was cry like the baby she was about to push. I had assumed my mother didn’t care about me anymore when I never heard back after sending the Mother’s Day card. I knew she was still alive, but it was easier for me to pretend she was dead, slowly cutting off my emotional attachment to her until she was a memory, a shimmering light in the distance slowly fading into nothingness. Staring into the box resurrected the pain I forced myself to bury and left me with so many questions I’m not ready to ask. Six months later, I still can’t look at the baby ornament without that overwhelming burn of sadness creeping up through my throat and around my eyes.

Another package came New Years’ Eve, more clothes and a note asking if I received the first package, wondering about the baby. I should have been happy that she cared and was concerned, but I couldn’t be, spiraling into a pit of anger for avoiding my attempts to contact her and regret for not replying after the first batch of clothes. I still haven’t written back or even sent a thank you, a picture of the baby, something to acknowledge we did, in fact, receive the packages. Each time I’ve sat down to write my mother I struggle with what to say, veering from the logical–”Why didn’t you return my phone calls or letters?”–to the hyperbolic–”You’ve hurt me more than you can even imagine.” I’m not ready to pull the Band-Aid off that wound, not until it scars and fades into the skin, because it hurts less to imagine it’s not there than to face the blood, the puss, the way the crust forms around the opening.

When I finally do write, I want to tell my mother I miss her, that her first grandchild, Sonny, is my greatest work of art, that I think about her everyday, especially when I say, “Oh my God!” with her Brooklyn-born disbelief or laugh so hard I snort, both of which I inherited from her, that for the last five years I wondered if we’d ever see each other again, that sometimes I feel like an adult orphan, that I wish I had a parent to be proud of me and how far I’ve come. I want to tell my mother I love her, but I wonder if she loves me back.

NAKED BABY!

1) There’s nothing more loving and humiliating than sniffing your child’s ass–Poop check, I call it–when he farts right in your face.

2) Poop checks are an anomaly only parents will ever know–unless there’s some ass-sniffing fetish I haven’t heard of yet. In our house, one with a baby, two adults, two dogs and a cat, we don’t live by the axiom “Whoever smelt it dealt it,” and instead do the rounds. First, depending on who smells it first, we’ll look at each other. “Oh my God! Was that you?” And if it is, our quiet smiles give it away. When we’ve ruled each other out, we move on to Sonny and the obligatory poop check, putting out nostrils against the rear of his soft diaper and inhaling the bouquet. If it’s not him, then we locate the dogs. Most often the culprit is Lulu (You read about her penchant for vomit-eating here.), our 20-lb Boston whose SBDs linger long after the pin is pulled from the grenade. If it’s not her, we know the cat didn’t cover her latest contribution to the household, and then we call her a dick the next time we see her.

3) I am becoming one of those weird men who’s into feet, but not just any feet, Sonny’s feet. His elbows, too. I find myself kissing and massaging the tender bottoms of his feet and meaty rolls around his elbows because, unlike mine, his are perfect. Sometimes, when I’m raspberrying his little toes, I wonder how his will ever look mine–hairy and dry and rough and scaly. Right now, they are so perfect, like the unturned pages of a freshly printed newspaper or a pair of new sneakers before they have creases in the soles, and although I know Sonny’s feet and elbows won’t stay this way forever, I pledge to embarrass the shit out of him with stories of nibbling on his little toes whenever he starts dating.

4) “NAKED BABY!”

That’s what I yell whenever we strip Sonny down to his diaper and give him some Tummy Time in the near-buff. (Word to the wise: Don’t let your baby be completely naked without taking proper measures to ensure you don’t get pissed on. You think, “Oh, he can’t piss that far!” and then he does, and you find yourself both proud of his distance and horrified that you must now clean piss dripping down a wall several feet away.)

Like kissing his little feet, “NAKED BABY!” reminds me how precious Sonny is, how unashamed he is to be naked. I used to run around my house naked all the time when I was a child. Well, not exactly naked, I had these yellow galoshes and a fireman hat that I’d gallop around in while my mom played records. Sometimes I’d tie a towel around my neck, pretending to be some naked superhero, flying around with my arms stretched out, like Superman. When I look at the “NAKED BABY!”, I always want him to have this level of trust in the world, to believe he can be naked and not be ashamed of his body and its differences. But parenting a young child is truly about achieving a proper balance of knowledge and innocence, teaching them enough about “the real world” to not crumble at the sight of adversity while ensuring they maintain a level of wonder that allows them to not be fearful of the unknown. Hopefully, that means we’ll have more “NAKED BABY!” in the future.

Jesus rose from the dead, so you can eat me without sin.

I do not believe in God, but I haven’t always. I was raised in an Irish Catholic family and for many years went to mass every Sunday, Wednesday, first Fridays and other mornings whenever Grandma took me to school because she went most days of the week, and although she isn’t able to go as much anymore, she now watches the service on public access. I have received a majority of the sacraments, have a confirmation name–Richard, after my uncle/Godfather who passed when I was seven, and will forever remember the “Our Father” even though I haven’t recited it in over a decade. I still say “Oh my God!” and hear the Sisters’ voices reminding me not to take the Lord’s name in vain, and I’ll never forget that particular smell of church, the lingering echo of smoke, wood and old paper, and the way the sun came through the tall stained glass windows creating a cascading rainbow of light across the pews.

It was around sixth grade when I began questioning the existence of God, unable to understand why my father left, my family was torn apart and most of the boys in my class and neighborhood abused me so ruthlessly for my weight. If God existed, why would so much suffering occur in my little middle school life and far more in the entire world? I hadn’t quite grasped the concept of free will then and wouldn’t learn of Anselm’s ontological argument or Augustine’s Via Negativa for years, but, at an early age, I did know that if God existed I would need actual physical proof and until I had it I would continue to question, as I would with the existence of ghosts and Bigfoot. When I confessed my doubt to a priest before my seventh grade Confirmation, he simply suggested I pray, which I did throughout my teen years, asking God for answers, for a sign that my diminishing faith was part of my path, like the Parable of the Prodigal Son, yet God never answered. I thought there was something wrong with me. Why couldn’t I just believe like everyone else?

By high school, when I went to an all-boys’ Catholic school, I was veering into agnosticism, interested in exploring other faiths and belief systems, slowly accepting my doubt as more than a whim. When I graduated, after discovering Camus, Nietzsche, Beckett’s “Waiting for Godot,” my atheism was budding, fueled by anger, confusion and teenage disillusionment. Within my first few weeks of college, I switched my major from Film to Philosophy, partially because most of the students in my school’s prestigious film program were boring and vapid, and my detachment from the Catholic church and the faith I was raised in truly began. I read Kant, Descartes, Kierkegaard, the existentialists, the utilitarians, ethical relativists and in the end, all the theories and arguments for and against the existence of God only confirmed that I do not believe. A decade later, I finally feel comfortable admitting it publicly. After all, atheists are as trusted as rapists.

I hadn’t thought much about my lack of faith until last year when Jaime became pregnant. I knew we wouldn’t raise our child to believe in God, permitting him to choose his own belief system once he was old enough to understand the implications and make an informed decision with conviction. Jaime wasn’t brought up in the church, although she considers herself an agnostic, so when I said that I didn’t want to baptize Sonny (Please don’t tell Grandma!), I think her reply was “Hell no.” I assumed raising our child without God also meant no Easter, Christmas, and the assorted other Christian holidays that came with a day off from school, but Jaime felt differently, telling me “I do not believe in the resurrection of Jesus, but I do believe in the Easter Bunny and egg hunts.”

For my wife, God isn’t a prerequisite to celebrate holidays because, in her eyes, Easter isn’t the holiest day of the year–it’s the chocolatiest. She didn’t sit through the marathon of masses–Holy Thursday, Good Friday and the long Easter Sunday service; avoid eating meat on Fridays; and sacrifice something for the forty days of Lent leading up to the Sunday where Christians across the world celebrate the resurrection of the Savior. For Jaime, Easter is painting eggs and hiding them in the backyard and waking up to a basket of Peeps and chocolate bunnies, experiences she wants to share with Sonny because she loved them so much, the surprise and wonder from the Easter Bunny’s treats only found in childhood. Jaime feels the same about Christmas, which I didn’t put up much of a fight over because I love the joy in her eyes when we put up the tree, bake the cookies and open presents, and understand why she would want our son to have it, too.

But, despite the lack of religiosity in the celebration of holidays in our home,  I am not exactly comfortable with it. When I finally accepted my atheism, it seemed wrong to participate in these holidays because they don’t mean anything to me, and I know they mean so much to so many others. Jaime didn’t struggle with her own faith, as I did, so turning Easter into a day of candy and ham instead of the holiest day of the year isn’t an ethical question for her. It’s simply about fun, family and coming together over a good meal.

Besides the holidays, I also struggle with how we’re going to raise Sonny as a non-believer in a world full of believers. How will we explain what makes us different from the families of most of his friends and classmates without making him self-conscious of our decisions and way of life? How will he reconcile our paganistic celebrations of these holidays with the world’s more religious versions? How will I? And will we be able to maintain his childhood innocence in the face of it all?

I wish I had answers to these questions, but I only have more doubt and uncertainty, though I do know, for me, praying isn’t the answer.

It can get lonely on this plateau.

People keep telling me I’m losing weight, but I’m not. Since my weigh-in of 208 lbs. on Dec. 6, Sonny’s due date, which doubled as the date I set to be under 200 lbs., my weight hasn’t dropped much, ranging between 206 and 216, depending on the time of day, how much water I’ve had and some other factors you probably don’t want to read about.

I have officially plateaued. My body has adjusted to my new lifestyle and no longer burns calories at the same rate as when I was heavier, reaching a point of diminishing returns. Last time I was here I thought I needed to “quit being a pussy and take it to the next level,” something I told myself often. I believed all the health and fitness advice I read in mens’ magazines, which are basically like Cosmo but with fewer mentions of the G-spot. I pared down my diet to a list of foods I could count on two hands (protein bars and shakes, meat, chicken, pasta, rice, some fruit and vegetables, yogurt and these awful low-fat soups), ratcheted up my work-outs to six days a week and cut everything out of my life that wasn’t part of this “clean” lifestyle I wanted to live, one that wasn’t sustainable. When I broke my diet, I beat myself up. When I didn’t lift as much or sweat as heavily as the work-out before, I beat myself up. When I missed a work-out, the stages of grief settled in, though usually I just stayed in the anger stage until the next work-out when I pushed myself harder than before. I wasn’t exercising to become a healthier person–I was punishing myself for a lifetime of overeating and depression, which only made me want to eat more and fall deeper into that hole because it was comfortable and safe, and food, more than anything else, made me happy.

Unable to reach my goal weight, I slowly began to loosen my restrictions, eating ice cream and other foods I had sworn off, drinking, partying, and then hating myself for my choices the next day, waking up in a food coma, my stomach swollen well beyond its capacity, or with an awful hangover, forcing me deeper and deeper into that hole. Soon, it all snowballed, veering back into old habits until one morning I went to the gym determined to get back on track but doing it the wrong way. I let my pride, my manhood, my quest to not be “a pussy” drive me, skipping stretching and warming up and heading straight for the bench where I was determined to lift my max weight with more sets and reps than I was capable of–not because it was a goal but rather a punishment I believed fit the crime. Halfway through that work-out, I felt a pop in my back, pain radiating down my left side and up into my shoulders, the part of my back I hurt when I was in a car accident years earlier. I should have stopped then, but I didn’t because I wasn’t a “pussy.” I truly believed being a man meant not being weak or vulnerable, and for a boy becoming a man without a father in his life, my entire existence was about proving my manhood, being the toughest, strongest person I could be, and always ready to kick somebody’s ass. But that one pop crumbled my facade the next morning when, getting out of bed, muscle spasms leveled me, turning my back, shoulder and neck into one massive knot that would take three years and multiple chiropractors and massage therapists to undo. During that time, the hole grew deeper and wider, if only to accommodate my body, which grew by 80 lbs., as well as the massive load of depression and anxiety tethered to my slowly disappearing neck. Eventually, the hole found its terminus, though I had several starts and stops, believing I’d hit bottom only to re-injure myself or be struck by a trauma–a burglary, being hit by a car, a near assault, losing my mother– turning back to food for happiness, making that hole a little deeper, a little wider.

This time, I am trying not to fixate on my weight, which, as of yesterday, was still 208 lbs. more than three months after my goal weigh-in. Instead, I focus on my strength, the way my clothes fit and–the completely unquantifiable–how I feel. I am stronger than I have ever been in my life, but what drives me, what pushes me out of bed each morning, isn’t this belief that I cannot be a pussy, this false sense of manhood and pride. I am motivated by my desire to live a healthy life, to become the person I know I am capable of being, the man of a few specialized talents, the fat kid who wants to tell other fat kids the truth: it won’t get better until you’re happy with who you are, and ultimately, to be the father who’s always there, none of which a scale will tell me.

Mansierre or bro--you won't catch me wearing one!

“I don’t have boobs anymore,” I told Jaime in disbelief while looking in the mirror after showering, the once-too-tight bath towel wrapped neatly over my hip bones, which I can now locate by sight and don’t need to bore my fingertips into the fat hanging from my sides. Recognizing I was no longer mansierre-worthy–or bro-worthy, if you prefer Cosmo Kramer’s moob pun–was a revelation, one I am extremely proud of because, like most fat boys, boobs weren’t just an indication of my fatness but an invitation to publicly shame me with titty twisters and purple nurples, one of the reasons I never enjoyed swimming or playing any team sport involving shirts and skins.

But it isn’t just my chest that’s more barrel than bosom–my entire body is dramatically changing. When I walk, my shoulders are squared and back, and I can feel my muscles bulge with each step. All of my t-shirt sleeves fit like skinny jeans, creeping up my arms, unable to keep covered the loaded guns beneath. My pants, whether belt-fastened or with waistbands made of elastic, sag like I shit myself, yet fit snugly around my thighs, two taut sausages ready to rip through their intestinal casings. My chin has abandoned its double, and the space between it and my chest, known to skinnys as the neck, is visible without having to tip my head back like I have a nosebleed. Also, that new world, my neck, formerly the area of my body covered by my second or third chin, doesn’t require intense scrubbing to clean the dirt from between the folds.

My body doesn’t feel like mine anymore. I am more muscular than I have ever been, even when I lost all the weight the first time. I can run long distances without losing my breath and at multiple speeds, like the part of my brain controlling my legs is a stick shift, letting me push into another gear when catching a bus depends on it. I see people at the gym, who weigh far less than I do, not able to keep up with me, and I wonder if, when they were younger, they were the predators, the purple nurplers, or the prey, the purple nurplees, and where we both fit on the spectrum now.

Sometimes I don’t feel like myself anymore. I look in the mirror and don’t see the same person. Something happens and I don’t react in anger, reflexively, out of instinct and then gorge myself to cope with my stress, emotions and poor choices. Exercise is how cope now, and I have an immense, almost unrelenting amount of energy for it, making my recovery days torturous, not restful. Ten years ago, recovery days were for hangovers, for the mornings after I ate myself into a state of pain that could only be forgiven through severe acts of starvation and self-degradation. Then I never thought I’d be anything but fat, that I’d always have boobs, a minimum of two chins and cankles, that I’d break a sweat just getting out of bed.

Am I no longer fat if I don’t have boobs? This is the question I keep asking myself.