Backstory

I used to have a political blog where I would hold forth on topics like the assault on civil liberties and the fact that America has gone completely insane since 911. It helped me keep my own sanity and yet it made me a rather preachy and angry crank at the same time. I have recently discovered that I’d rather spend my time mastering the art of being a decent father instead of being the proverbial man in the basement shaking his fist at the drop ceiling. So, I am going to let go of my alter-ego The Patriot, and spend some time analyzing things other than the state of civil liberties and the economic free-fall. That’s what this blog will be about.

The day after Becky’s funeral it dawned on me that any expectation I may have harbored about resuming a somewhat normal life was complete nonsense. Despite the fact that I was solely responsible for keeping my son alive and reasonably well, I felt completely incapable of fulfilling the role of provider and single-father that had just been unexpectedly dumped into my lap. I took a personal survey and decided that the odds of success were not good. Here I was, a 39 year old classic Gen X underachiever, 40 pounds overweight with a taste for boozy night-life and a job that kept me on the road for two weeks out of every month. I didn’t make nearly enough money to live in New York City on one income and I knew absolutely nothing about caring for a baby other than what I had sort of picked up by a cursory reading of the pile of baby books gathering dust on my nightstand. Yup, I was fucked, no two ways about it. I also knew enough about human nature to suspect (correctly as it turned out) that the myriad offers of help proferred by well-intentioned friends in the immediate aftermath of Becky’s passing would start to dry up in a few months as people went back to their own chaotic lives. Faced with such an immense clusterfuck, I responded the only way possible; total denial. I went back to work a week after the funeral and cajoled various relatives to come up to New York to “babysit for Jack” for periods of about a week each. This left me plenty of time to drink large volumes of red wine and start to feel very, very sorry for myself.

During the early weeks and months following his birth, my beautiful son did precious little other than eat, crap, sleep, cry and scare the ever-loving shit out of me. No matter what I did, I was convinced that I was either going to inadvertently kill him or at the least cause the poor fellow some sort of irreparable and lasting harm. Sterilize the bottles? Heat the formula? What the hell are you all talking about!? Fortunately, after the first month of relative supported parenting I hired a a saintly woman from Trinidad who became (and remains) Jack’s caretaker. This took some of the pressure off and gave me an opportunity to catch up on the latest childcare controversies brewing on www.urbanbaby.com. I also started devouring Dr. Sears books and weighing the virtues of attachment parenting versus the Ferber method. Things gradually started to be less terrifying. Then spring came. I'll pick up here tomorrow.