Skip to primary content

Vibrate | Nov 03 2005

People say it’s different when the child is yours, but what if this is wrong? Certainly there must be cases in which it’s wrong. Lisa claimed I would love my cellphone when I finally got one, and then I finally got one, in no small part because of what Lisa said, and I hated it. I still hate it, two years later. What if I react this way to my child? Most times I leave my cellphone at home because I don’t want to put up with answering it. You cannot do this with a child. A child is yours forever and cannot be left at home, cannot be set to vibrate, cannot be upgraded to a better model with improved reception and a built-in camera.

People say everything changes in a way you can’t imagine, so I try to imagine this happening to me, but of course I can’t because you can’t imagine what’s unimaginable. You have to take it on faith. You have to trust that when you look into the eyes of your child, everything will change and you will change and nothing will ever be the same again. But what if it doesn’t happen this way? What if you look and all you see are your child’s eyes looking back at you and nothing changes except that here is your child and here are you and nothing is changing?