Three Weeks, or Thereabouts

Our due date is roughly three weeks from today. Which really means that it could happen any time between next Sunday and five weeks from now. One of the more hilarious movies I have ever seen is Hot Fuzz, a satire on nearly every cop movie of all time by the brilliant British team that gave us Shawn of the Dead and the much less good, Run, Fat Boy, Run. One of the characters in the movie, the fat cop who loves to pretend his life is like a cop movie repeats a few times throughout the film this single line from the Bad Boy franchise: “This shit just got real.” I will now borrow that line for describing my life.

Clara’s second baby shower was the other day. There was one in Colorado for our families and old friends and another here in Kansas for our families and new friends. I already think my unborn child has more stuff than me. He certainly has more clothing. There is baby stuff everywhere right now. It is funny to think of how our house has changed already. Since we only have a two-bedroom, I am sharing my office with Owen, or to be more accurate spatially speaking, he is sharing his bedroom with my office. Where I once had a room all to myself, complete with two bookcases, computer desk, old music posters on the walls, and a futon to sit on for lighter reading, my office now consists of an old desk shoved into a small nook where I can’t really move my chair once I am sitting because I am hemmed in by the desk on one side and filing cabinets on the other. The two bookcases are split between the living room and our bedroom and the futon is in the basement at a friend’s place. Parenthood.

My parents are incredibly excited to be grandparents as every friend, family member, casual acquaintance, waiter, barista, bus boy, gas station attendant, hotel desk worker, construction zone sign holder, and door-to-door salesman that they have encountered in the past six months would tell you. We knew we were in trouble when they first visited us in El Paso after we had been married for a few months and our friends made the mistake of bringing their six month old baby boy to our apartment. They were in full on grandparent mode. They did a good job of not pressuring us, but it was always known that Brooke and Alan would gladly accept news of our first offspring.

Now it is really just a waiting game. And I can’t wait to meet him. I can’t wait to hold him and kiss his little face and sit and stare at him for hours at a time. I just spent some time on youtube watching videos of babies doing cute and abnormal things. By myself. I don’t know at this point what it feels like to be a father, what that little child nearly oblivious to your existence can mean to you, but as the day approaches I feel like I am getting a closer approximation. And then a day will come when Clara gives me the signal and I break all traffic regulations getting to Topeka with my heart pounding out of my chest and we go into a room as two and leave it as three. Incredible.