Thursday, August 27, 2009

One Year's Eve

Call it the cold front passing through, but I have this weird feeling in my bones that tomorrow everything changes. Perhaps I'm wrong, of course. Perhaps only I will change. But this is only logically distinct, not empirically. And either way I'm nervous.

Of course I can't know until tomorrow. But my intuition tells me that there is a basic difference between the father of a newborn and the father of a one-year old, a difference that begins on the level of the wardrobe and extends to the level of ontology. The man in the thick of his child's first year is the canonical New-Parent, gog-eyed, frazzled, sheet-rumpled, while the man with a one-year-old is merely the Parent, rheumy, droopy, groomed. I feel that to cross the threshold of a child's first year within the confines of a stable domestic arrangement is akin to a solemn forswearing of poetic improvidence, that after one year the Simple Idiocies (running off to the French foreign legion, developing an opium habit, turning to cards) lose their appeal and slip out of reach. There remains only the Slog, the long, dippy road to college funds and pension plans.

Make no mistake. The Slog has its charms. But isn't it odd that I find myself downplaying my son's birthday even more than I downplay my own?

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