CHAPTER 29. Class is in session. Before you have a kid, when you look at a woman, you probably aren’t thinking, “Would she make a good mom?” That question might arise somewhere in the back of your medulla oblongata, but it’s not in the top 500 things you think about when you first feel intoxicated by the scent of a woman. I once knew an unfair maiden who, in retrospect, was perhaps not the most emotionally generous person on earth. Imagine dying of thirst and lying under a block of ice, waiting for a drop of water to fall into your mouth. It was like that. At the time, I was happy pushing boulders up a mountain to please her. But now that I look at Lev, it makes me look at characters like her through a different lens: would I really subject my child to the emotional stinginess of someone for whom the simple act of falling in love is such a constipated and manipulative affair? When you become a father, if you really fall head over heels with the baby, you begin to appreciate the woman with whom you share the awesome responsibility of parenting in an entirely new light. I watch through bleary eyes as Michelle wakes up at 90-minute intervals night after night. How rather than drag her body like a burlap sack full of marbles like I do, she springs from the bed at Lev’s slightest whimper. She holds him for hours, smiling and laughing, caressing him, with a love that is overflowing and endlessly energizes her. Yes, she gets tired, but she places Levs needs far above her own. She never complains or suggests we leave him on someone’s doorstep. As I observe her selfless way of caring for him, I see that Lev has been teaching her what love means. I am watching from the sidelines as my infant son blows Michelle’s heart and mind wide open, creating new horizons of sensitivity and patience. It’s like one of those dreams where suddenly the house you live in has a new room and you wander through it, exploring it with a sense of ether and amazement. He has set us both off on that dreamlike expansion of the arteries and aeries around that surround the human heart. Michelle excels as a student of love. I know she is going to get an A+ at the end of the semester, except the semester never ends. It’s actually one long final exam, but that’s not the point. The point is, we have the same professor. He is a ruthless little pedant with unusual teaching methods. He literally shits all over us, pees in our faces, and abuses us throughout the night with mysterious shouts and grunts. He regularly farts loudly in the middle of class. The homework is relentless, and he never lets us out for recess. However, neither Michelle or I has ever encountered a teacher as powerful as this little 8-pound bundle of wisdom and poo. It may be 4 am, but I stare at him, tiny guru, firestarter, gnomic wizard, and I bow. I would bring him an apple but he has no teeth. Still, with that gummy little grin he has taught us both what love really means: to give everything of oneself happily, to forgo sleep, food and showers without question or hesitation, simply and utterly because you are so magnetically drawn to protect and nurture another human being. It’s a lesson we’re never done learning.
Posted on: Wed, 14 Jan 2015 04:28:22 +0000
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