The New Me
Parenthood can transform you--in ways both small and profound
by Josh Lerman
It started simply enough, one morning just a few days after my daughter Olivia was born. I was on the way to work, staggering under the compound weights of sleep deprivation and the anxiety that typically accompanies first-time fatherhood, and I decided I needed a treat with my morning coffee. Not just any treat. For some reason I decided that I wanted--no, deserved--a chocolate croissant.
My wife, Christina, and I had been up much of the night engaged in all manner of singing, rocking, feeding, pacing, sitting, bouncing, and standing in a desperate (and largely unsuccessful) attempt to coax Olivia to sleep. And so my general worn-down-and-bedraggledness--combined with the sour taste of a night spent if not arguing, then not quite agreeing on which method to use and who should use it--engendered a powerful appetite mixed with a sense of entitlement. Today, I silently declared, I owe myself a luxurious pleasure.
But it didn't end there. Just about every morning, I found, I deserved a treat. A sweet one. What began as a one-morning reprieve turned into a regular occurrence. Doughnuts. Cookies. Crumb cake! I used to skip dessert at dinner--I'd sooner have seconds of roast chicken than a few little cookies--but now I looked forward to a little sweet something after a meal. At lunch I selected, increasingly, the sweetened sodas I'd never desired. It was as if the birth of my daughter had shocked my system into a complete retrenchment, not only of habit but of taste.
What made this all unnerving was that I defined myself in part by my taste in food, and I took pride in it--rightly or wrongly. Sweetness was pedestrian. It was one-note. It was universally loved, across cultures, boundaries, and religions, and therefore lacked distinction. To like sweetness, I felt, was symptomatic of a lack of discrimination.
I, on the other hand (oh, fascinating man!), drank my coffee black. Liked only my sister's apple pie, with its distinguishing tartness. Disliked most cake. This particular taste, I see now, seemed to be not only best, but to be good, correct. Desiring sweets was a sign of weakness, and besides being able to resist them (What strength! What discipline!), I could also transcend the longing and not even like them.
Now, though, I was forced to redefine myself on terms not my own. It was as if all the sacrifices that I knew came with parenthood were manifesting themselves in this one small reversal. I had expected, when I became a father, that there would be changes in my life--reallocations of time, reassessments of priorities, even blossomings of unprecedented tenderness. But I hadn't expected a mutation of my very nature, what I took for granted as being essential to my me-ness.
I also found myself being challenged in other realms of perception and belief. I'd always treasured my lack of sentimentality, feeling fortunate not to be impeded by a clutter of emotion or maudlin regard for the past. A clear, rational view was far more sensible and useful and demonstrated a sound, perhaps superior, understanding of what was required by a complicated world.
But when confronted with a tiny arm draped casually around my neck as its owner snuggled against my shoulder, her sleeping mouth making little sucking gestures, or a minuscule thumb and forefinger pinkly plucking at my nose or lip, I was gradually giving in to a kind of gooey, cloying sappiness. And when one of Olivia's first words, "Dat" for Dad, brought me near tears, I knew something in me I used to lean on for strength was near collapse.
Is this what fatherhood would do to me? Reduce me? Undermine what I took to be as much a matter of principle as preference? Would I lose, in fatherhood, not only a measure of freedom but also treasured parts of myself? What would life be like without my compass of pure objectivity?
A year passed. Then, quickly, a second and third. Olivia is now 4, and she's progressed from a restless, frequently crying infant to a complex, curious, active little girl. And I've changed too. Not my desire for sugar. That has remained, if perhaps moderately in proportion to Olivia's ability to sleep through the night. What's changed is that I've been humbled. In watching Olivia grow--her nature poke through, sprout, and bloom, her independent self come into being--I've been brought face to face with the absurdity of my secret fears and prejudices. I'd thought that my contempt for confections made me larger, but actually, in my hubris, it made me smaller.
The change in my taste buds that accompanied Olivia's birth, which I thought equivalent to a blinding, making me commonplace, was actually a revelation. And the warming of my chilly rationality, rather than representing a capitulation to the forces of the saccharine, was really just a gentle lesson in humanity. Walking forward, holding Olivia's tiny hand, I now taste so much more than I ever did. And I find all of it--the roasts and the rib eyes, the salmon and the sourdough--the sweeter for it.
Josh Lerman is a senior editor at PARENTING magazine.
Copyright 2002 PARENTING magazine. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
