My life.

Riley just ran up and kissed my knee, for no apparent reason, then turned and ran shrieking
from the room with his arms straight up in the air.

This has been going on for 20 minutes.

I’ve given up on trying to control this behavior. I understand less about a three-year-old
than I did about a two-year-old, which was light-years ahead of my understanding of a
baby. I’m just hanging on for the ride.

Kylen sits on the floor beside me, giving me his dopey grin. I know what he’s thinking.
There aren’t nearly as many questions the second time around, and an eight-month-old
holds few mysteries, but many secrets.

Riley’s back. He’s standing in the doorway, looking at me with his head slightly down. He
does this when he’s about to spill something important.

“What’s up, buddy?”

“Daddy, I love you.”

Damn. Here I go again. This lump in my throat can appear in an instant now. I’m helpless at
the hands of my little child, who of course has no concept of the power he wields.

This isn’t about being madly, insanely in love with this moody, unpredictable,
uncontrollable being I purposely brought into the world. This is about my long, moody,
unpredictable, uncontrollable journey to realizing that love. It’s a journey my wife, Traci,
and I began six years ago.

On my way to loving this kid, I almost lost everything I so desperately wanted for my life
and Traci’s, including my sense of self, my freedom, my love for the most important person
I’ve ever known, and my understanding of life itself.

Sounds dramatic, doesn’t it? The Earth never shook along the way; the world did not notice,
nor did anyone else, aside from Traci. This travel was all internal, but it’s the journey I
think we all take, the only one that counts, because at the end, this is how we keep score,
with a simple question. “Am I happy?” And the world’s perception of parenthood conspires
against ever feeling anything but unmitigated joy at the blessing you’ve received.

Well, the new parent section at the bookstore can have their reality, I’ll have mine. Maybe
I’m a minority…it’s certainly the feeling I had.

But I think there are others.

I think there are new moms and dads, moms and dads to be, and those just trying to decide
whether to take the step that are filled with doubt, regret, fear and guilt. Not the “I hope I’m
a good parent.” But, “I would give my right arm for my old life back.”

So my apologies to those who think I’m simply selfish or those who struggle for years in
vain to have a child. I’ve known both kinds, and I understand. This isn’t for you. And for
everyone else who reads this and says ‘yep, that’s me,’ all I have to offer is what I learned
along the way that made me ache, cry, laugh so hard I cried again, scream into the night,
and ultimately fall in love with this little lump of child, my wife and my life in a way I could
never have imagined.

Riley stands in the doorway, waiting for an answer. “I love you too, Riley. More than you
know.”

But I’m getting ahead of myself.

Excerpt
(Author’s note: this bit of fun takes place a good year or so after the end of a long,
painful journey where we concluded, with no fanfare or flourish, that the vote was
“have a kid.” So, in truth I’m dropping you in after an awful lot of our adventure, but
hey, I like this section.)

After the first year it became evident that something was wrong. One of us wasn’t getting
the job done. The question was who? Now, the fertility dance done by millions of would-be
parents starts with the guy. He’s the first point of failure, and the easiest to diagnose. For
anyone who’s had the pleasure, the process is fairly straightforward…it involves a cup and
some private time.

Traci looked at this first step with some level of amusement and satisfaction. And of course
she hoped like crazy it was not her fault that we were in a holding pattern. For my part, I
figured, what’s not to like? A private room, a little quite time with a stack of high quality
porn, a license to do what comes naturally. I can do this.

At this point, the first thoughts were creeping into my still-ambivalent head that there
might be a way out of the whole child discussion before it ever reached the “too-late” stage.
If there was a problem with my guys (or if in fact I had no guys down there), the issue
would be moot. We’d agreed that we would go to no extraordinary steps to have kids. Our
philosophy—unique to this issue—was that someone else was in control, and we would
submit to the higher answer.

Also, I fervently hoped that if there was a problem it was on me, and not Traci. I knew she
would carry that weight on her shoulders forever, a self-imposed burden I did not wish on
her in the least, as my words to the contrary would always be met with skepticism.
I showed up at the testing lab at the appointed hour, in good spirits. Being a general
diagnostic center, the waiting room was jammed with all manner of humanity giving blood
for cholesterol checks and urine samples for who knew what. The sign in sheet was my first
sign of trouble. Next to “name”, it said “reason for visit.”

Hmmm.

I went down the list in my head. Fertility. Sterility. Pregnancy (no, that wouldn’t work),
semenalysis, sperm count, forced masturbation?

I settled on “fertility” and took a seat. As my butt hit the plastic, a very large receptionist
adorned in dingy whites slammed open the frosted privacy glass and grabbed the
clipboard. She grimaced as she read, very, very loudly, “Borsch? Fertility?”

As if on strings, a dozen heads swung slowly in my direction. An old lady shook her head
disapprovingly. I think she actually tsked…something I’d only heard my grandmother do. I
raised a hand, rose from my seat and began quick-stepping across the crappy linoleum.

Before I got three steps the increasingly evil woman yelled across the room “what’s
Fertility mean? Are you here to give a semen sample or for impotence testing?”

I continued my race-walk across a room that had become as large as a Home Depot, both
hands waving in front of my face as if to ward off her evil words. Chuckling could be heard
in the corner, behind me.

Reaching the window, I whispered “semen sample.”

Although I was now fourteen inches from her face, she continued in the same voice,
“Semen. OK, come around back, I’ll give you a cup to fill. You’ll need to wash your hands.”

Coming around back involved walking the gauntlet of the entire waiting room. People
biding their time for what I could only assume were the most noble of purposes such as
donating unneeded organs or bone marrow. I met their gaze as a death row prisoner looks
at a priest. Many stared at their feet, not willing to acknowledge the guy with the sperm
problem, but no doubt saving the story for their angelic spouses, who would listen in wide-
eyed fascination about the freak.

Safely out of the waiting room, I walked toward the receptionist/ogre in the dirty
Hushpuppies. She took my information, and never looking away from her monitor, shoved
a plastic wrapped cup in my face. Pointing toward a room across the hall, she said “In
there.”

Two steps were all it took for me to see she’d obviously pointed me to the wrong place. All
that was ahead was a clinical unisex bathroom with a massive handicap railing. There was
not a single magazine of any type, not even a Ladies Home Journal, inside. I turned back, but
she’d crawled back into her cave, growling into the phone. A nurse who looked strikingly
like the ogre’s sister, but heavier, was nearby.

“I’m supposed to, um, give a, uh, uh, a semen sample?”

“In there,” she said, pointing to the same room.

I stood clutching my little cup with two hands.

“There are others waiting, please be quick.” And she was gone.

Please be quick. I wilted all the way to my shoes.

Entering the bathroom, I closed the door. I stared at myself in the mirror. Hello big guy,
come here often? Now, like all men, I keep with me a treasure trove of fantasies, indexed
and cataloged and ideal for any situation. There is, alas, no fantasy in my library to
overcome the cold sterility of an antiseptic little bathroom in a testing lab, where others
waited for me to finish so they could do the monumentally simple task of peeing into a cup.
In that moment I could also have signed up for the impotence testing.

15 humiliating minutes later I emerged, holding my cup in front of me. I didn’t bother to
tuck in my shirt. I felt violated.

I left, and headed immediately to the drug store for a tube of salve.

###