Yesterday on Jack’s 8 week “birthday”, we inked his hand and foot for keepsakes. As you can see in the picture above, it took more than one try. I realize that I’m putting myself in danger of sounding like a Hallmark card or an oversensitive dad who would cry on a reality TV show, but I see a lot of symbolism in this tradition of preserving the glorified silhouettes of our baby’s hands and feet. Jack’s handprint symbolizes all the peoples’ hands he will shake when meets them, from his college roommates to his first real employer to his future father-in-law. His handprint also represents the music he will play on his guitar (it’s inevitable that he will be a musician like me). Who will he meet? What will he write? Or build? Or create?
Jack’s footprint obviously symbolizes the places he will go. Where will he go to college and where will he live? And also, meta-phorically, like Dr. Seuss’s final book in 1990, Oh, The Places You’ll Go!, in the big picture sense, where will his life go? Which exceptional events will take place in his life? Which things about Jack’s life will be unique compared to every other person who has ever lived? Where will he step where no one has ever stepped before, both literally and symbolically?
In our house, these hand-prints and footprints are more than just a traditional keepsake. They also tell a story. A story that has already been written, just waiting for the time to be told. Oh, the places he’ll go!
Notice the cloth diapers? More on that in the near future…
Something I had always been acutely aware of is that when two people have a baby, there’s a good solid 6 weeks that go by where you stop seeing them in public. But shortly after that, the couple begins to dare to make random public appearances. Like last week, we attempted to take Jack with us to buy groceries. Really, there’s no need for me to paint the details of that story; if you can imagine it, that’s what happened. Therefore, today I went alone to buy groceries. It took just as long being that I’m a guy and we, the male species, don’t have instincts to tell us things like where to find vanilla extract or even at our own house where the cutting boards go in the kitchen.
But with me still not having a job yet and with the cold winter weather, the three of us have spent a lot of time indoors. Now I know what it’s like to be a 29 year-old retired millionaire who gets to stay at home all day in his pajamas and eat cereal for lunch. Minus the million dollars and plus the need to actually make a living. So after a month of constantly looking online for jobs and applying, and taking care of Jack, and watching random documentaries instantly on Netflix through the Wii, we decided we were brave enough to take Jack to church for the first time; out of the womb.
Of course, despite giving ourselves plenty of time to get there early, Jack decided he wanted one last snack of milk right as we were heading out the door. Then we had to change his diaper. So we arrived 10 minutes late and the only place left to sit was up in the balcony. This turned out to be a pretty good location though; since we were right next to the door for the moment he would inevitably start crying. He lasted 35 minutes before we had to dart for the door with him. We were impressed.
Maybe somewhat surprisingly, I am a proud Country music fan- though I’m ultimately a Dave Matthews Band/Guster/John Mayer/Bruce Springsteen/Tom Petty kind of guy. In the past few weeks, in the midst of leaving our lives behind in Nashville and entering uncertainty and a current status of “in between jobs” in Alabama, not having much to do but constantly search for jobs and take care of our baby, the lyrics to a Country song by Andy Griggs from 1999 keep coming to my mind: “I promise you now, you won’t ever be lonely.” Though the song is obviously written from the perspective of a man in love with a woman, looking forward to spending the rest of his life with her, the lyrics now speak to me in a different way:
“You’re safe from the world wrapped in my arms and I’ll never let go. Baby, here’s where it starts and I promise you now you won’t ever be lonely. Here’s a shoulder you can cry on and a love you can rely on. For as long as I live there will always be a place you belong.”
But while the words to this song obviously make perfect sense in the perspective of me speaking to my child, they actually are more relevant to me in this mindset: I won’t ever be lonely. Not just him. But I won’t ever be lonely.
I am better able to understand now why there are so many pregnant teenagers and why MTV’s 16 and Pregnant is such a popular show- because so many kids today are lonely. (I am under the crazy notion that a good number of pregnant teens and extremely young parents are not getting pregnant simply because of the careless lack of birth control, but instead because they subconsciously want to be have a baby in a attempt to be loved by someone.) So many daughters have never been told by their fathers that they are beautiful. So many sons have never heard their father tell them “I’m proud of you”. Having a baby definitely changes the lonely factor in many ways. Even if the 19 year-old father who works for minimum wage at the oil change place bales on her soon after the baby is born- at least that young mother will always have someone depending on her.
Granted, I haven’t been lonely in a long time. But I can easily remember it. It can be painful; literally. Last week I watched a National Geographic documentary on solitary confinement where I learned that loneliness is processed in the same part of the brain as pain. I can easily remember being 20 years old, feeling lost, out of place, an unmatched. I wondered for the next five years if I would be like the actor who played Mr. Belvedere, who never married or had children his whole life. But at age 25, my wife and I met each other and those heavy and desperate thoughts of loneliness haven’t entered my mind in over four years.
Now at age 29, I am the opposite of lonely. I have a wonderful wife and a beautiful and hilarious baby son that I will always matter to. And I have a feeling that the older our son Jack gets, the more attention and energy of mine that he will require. At least until he reaches 7th grade and gets too cool for me.
Lyrics to Andy Griggs’ “You Won’t Ever Be Lonely”:
Life may not always go your way And every once in awhile you might have a bad day But I promise you now you won’t ever be lonely The sky turns dark and everything goes wrong Run to me and I’ll leave the light on And I promise you now you won’t ever be lonely
For as long as I live There will always be a place you belong Here beside me Heart and soul baby — you only And I promise you now you won’t ever be lonely
It’s still gonna snow and it’s still gonna rain The wind’s gonna blow on a cold winter day And I promise you now you won’t ever be lonely You’re safe from the world wrapped in my arms And I’ll never let go Baby, here’s where it starts And I promise you now you won’t ever be lonely Here’s a shoulder you can cry on And a love you can rely on For as long as I live There will always be a place you belong
Here beside me Heart and soul baby — you only And I promise you now you won’t ever be lonely No, no, you won’t ever be lonely
It’s a sort of eery feeling getting up at 1:30 AM, 3:30 AM, and/or 5:30 AM every morning to feed and change Jack. While it’s still dark and quiet, while I’m only “awake” enough to put the word in quotation marks, and while my memory barely records the routine actions taking place during the twilight, I’m sure I’m subconsciously looking for something out of the ordinary. As I hold Jack in one arm and his bottle in the other, the dimly lit room casts a strange shadow on his face. Sometimes when I look at him during this time I get a little creeped out. In this situation he reminds me of a baby version of the Cowardly Lion in the Wizard of Oz (played by the Jewish actor Bert Lahr); that movie and the original Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, though they are both wonderful classic movies, have always freaked me out a bit. On a similar note, it also seems like I’m taking care of a little old man, with his receding hairstyle (Jack Nicholson style), his chubby cheeks, and his baby-version-of-cussing-somebody-out cries when he’s really hungry and his diaper is wet.
To make matters more theatrical, there are times when I am taking care of him during the middle of the night when it’s like he peeks around my shoulder and sees something and gets this calm yet curious look on his face. Does he see something? A guardian angel? Jesus? Maybe the ghost of Bert Lahr?
I wouldn’t be surprised if babies can see into the spiritual realm. It could make sense in a way; babies are completely innocent. They are unaware of damning traps like pride and greed. I could see how a baby is naturally closer to Heaven than we adults are. Sometimes I envy the things my baby may be seeing. But then again, it would be just another thing to spook me in the middle of the night. It seems every account I can immediately think of in the Bible where an angelic being spoke to a human, the angel always had to start the conversation out with “Do not be afraid…” But Jack isn’t scared by whatever he is seeing around me that I am less aware; if he’s actually seeing anything supernatural at all.
I chose not to go public about Jack being tongue tied, maybe in a subconscious attempt to avoid being overwhelmed with polarizing schools of advice before my wife and I had time to assess the situation ourselves and learn what would truly be best for him. We realized after just the first couple of days after Jack was born that he wasn’t able to feed like other babies. He could never get a good latch nor could he take more than a few sips of milk before crying and making a gurgling sound. Actually, I never knew that being tongue tied was a real thing. I just thought it was a phrase people used to describe momentarily not being able to successfully speak. In case you haven’t already clicked on the Wikipedia link in the first sentence or already know this, some babies are born with that “skin bridge” attached too closely for them to stick out their tongues very far.
In Jack’s case, it meant extreme difficulty in feeding. For more extreme cases, a tongue tied baby may grow up to become a child or adult with a speech impediment. So last Thursday, we drove back to Vanderbilt in Nashville and had Jack’s tongue clipped. I consider it a 2nd circumcision of sorts. In fact, I was offered the chance to watch the procedure, so I did. It was everything you would imagine. Just a few quick cuts. I highly recommend it if your infant or child is tongue tied.
Since Thursday, the silver coating the doctor sprayed on the lacerations has been slowly peeling off. So in a few more days, he should be out of pain and be able to begin learning to feed normally, with a tongue that can reach past his lips. So if you have a tongue tied baby, and you’re asking for my opinion, just get it clipped. It’s no big deal and it sure beats having to wonder how much easier feeding could have been and whether your child will have difficulty speaking.
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