andrew (![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} heiligekuh) wrote,@ 2007-11-28 21:57:00 |
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So, I have half a dozen random things I keep talking to myself about, but they're all non-baby related. My mind runs to a bunch of stuff that's trivial in the larger world, mainly because thinking about the GRAND IMPORTANT bits of fatherhood can get a bit much while you're trying to deal with diapers, naps and all the rest.
But we just had Thanksgiving, with the three of us visiting my parents in OC. And. . .well, they're still my parents. I love them, and (naturally) have more and more appreciation for them as I watch Annika and watch myself change in response to her.
The one thing we don't have, across all of the grandparents Annika has to choose from, is a surviving relationship. Jodi's parents split when she was an adolescent, and while both of them are full of stories of her early days, those stories are still bound up in the larger parent narrative. They're not stories told together, from a shared history. Rather, their quietly contentious or obviously back-filled with the politics of the divorce. Our head of school is a much more dramatic example of this. Every time we talk about the experience of having a newborn at home, she makes a point to slam her ex-husband for being completely absent from the infant/child rearing process. Which, you know, may be completely true. It's just . . .not the story I want to hear. Jodi's non-bio mom came into the picture when J was a bit older and is a great woman; but she wasn't a part of those early days for J. And my parents - - -ugh. My mom is so hyper invested in the narrative she's made out of those early years and my dad is so detached and disconnected from it. Yeah, so basically like everything with them. Anyway, that disparity between their responses means that they don't ever tell any stories together. My mom relates one of her stcok anecdotes and the closest my dad comes to participating in it is that he'll "correct" her occasionally. Yeah, ugh.
So, this is the thing I want to give her. I like who Jodi and I are as a couple. Maybe I'm being selfish, but I'm so in love with jodi (and have been for so long) that I really want that to be a part of our stories for Annika. I want her to know that she was immediately part of an us.
I want Annika, in that far flung future (right before she moves off-planet) to sit down with us and hear the story of how her mom and dad became the parents she's always known and loved. And I want her to look at us, wrinkled and deflated, and see our 2007 smiles staring back at her with all the love we have for each other now echoed down through the decades. Know that she was the only thing in the world that could have possibly brought us closer together.
That's what I want her to take with her when she heads off in the rocket.
But we just had Thanksgiving, with the three of us visiting my parents in OC. And. . .well, they're still my parents. I love them, and (naturally) have more and more appreciation for them as I watch Annika and watch myself change in response to her.
The one thing we don't have, across all of the grandparents Annika has to choose from, is a surviving relationship. Jodi's parents split when she was an adolescent, and while both of them are full of stories of her early days, those stories are still bound up in the larger parent narrative. They're not stories told together, from a shared history. Rather, their quietly contentious or obviously back-filled with the politics of the divorce. Our head of school is a much more dramatic example of this. Every time we talk about the experience of having a newborn at home, she makes a point to slam her ex-husband for being completely absent from the infant/child rearing process. Which, you know, may be completely true. It's just . . .not the story I want to hear. Jodi's non-bio mom came into the picture when J was a bit older and is a great woman; but she wasn't a part of those early days for J. And my parents - - -ugh. My mom is so hyper invested in the narrative she's made out of those early years and my dad is so detached and disconnected from it. Yeah, so basically like everything with them. Anyway, that disparity between their responses means that they don't ever tell any stories together. My mom relates one of her stcok anecdotes and the closest my dad comes to participating in it is that he'll "correct" her occasionally. Yeah, ugh.
So, this is the thing I want to give her. I like who Jodi and I are as a couple. Maybe I'm being selfish, but I'm so in love with jodi (and have been for so long) that I really want that to be a part of our stories for Annika. I want her to know that she was immediately part of an us.
I want Annika, in that far flung future (right before she moves off-planet) to sit down with us and hear the story of how her mom and dad became the parents she's always known and loved. And I want her to look at us, wrinkled and deflated, and see our 2007 smiles staring back at her with all the love we have for each other now echoed down through the decades. Know that she was the only thing in the world that could have possibly brought us closer together.
That's what I want her to take with her when she heads off in the rocket.
