Vibrate

People say it’s different when the child is yours. But what if in my case this is untrue? Certainly that must happen. Lisa was convinced I would love having a cellphone, and then I finally got one, in no small part because of Lisa’s conviction, and immediately hated the thing, and hate it still. What if I react like this 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 cannot be left at home, cannot be set to vibrate, cannot be upgraded to a model with improved reception and a built-in camera.

People say everything changes in a way you can’t imagine, and so I try to imagine what that must be like. But of course I can’t, because you can’t imagine what you can’t imagine. You have to take the thing 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. But what if that doesn’t happen? 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?