Hey! You in there!

Ms and I were lounging around tonight, she playing Candy Crush, me using her as an increasingly comfortable pillow, when she asked me if it was about time for me to start reading to the Critter. Naturally, I turned, tapped on her belly, and said “Hey, you in there!” I think my next move was to put my face on her belly and start reciting strange versions of nursery rhymes.

I can only imagine what it would sound like, if only our Critter had ears. We’re still at the translucent-with-flippers stage.

If only instead of dust to dust, the arc of our lives were flippers to flippers. How wonderful would it be to hit a ripe old age, leap into the sea, and paddle off into the night. I suppose you’d end up eaten by a dolphin, but at least you’d have some variety.

It would, incidentally, also make explaining death to a child a somewhat less fraught process.

I only mention this because this is exactly the kind of thing I am built to say to our offspring. Just bizarre, outlandish nonsense. “Where did Fluffy McFluffington go daddy?” “Well, when kitties get to a certain age, they grow flippers and return to the sea!” And this is the point where I really come to terms with the fact that I might fuck up another human being. Holy crap! I’ve written software for a living! I know how easy it is to stick an infinite loop in there with even the most careful effort! Exclamation point!

Thank goodness human beings aren’t computer programs. But still.

Don’t get me wrong: I’m not lacking confidence. I think I’m a well-adjusted, sane, responsible human being who will do my best to provide enriching activities for the Critter while simultaneously building an environment in which the Critter can explore its (still “it” for the moment) own little destinies.

And, really, even if I weren’t, humans have a remarkable ability to outgrow indoctrination. Go back not terribly far in my family, and we had people who thought it was perfectly normal to own other human beings. And then the next generation didn’t. And then the next generation was a quiet revolutionary in the fight for racial integration. Try as you might to screw up a kid, the kid often ends up having the last laugh.

So, back to mumbling into my wife’s belly. It’s hard not to do something like that and think along the lines of “oh god what do we really know about human fetal development? could the sound waves have jarred loose some critical connection in the Critter’s brain? are we going to end up with a conservative?!” My brain has gotten really weird since P Day. (Hee hee, “P Day.” Pee. Stick. I am slain.) Could this be why my dad was so … odd? Did finding out he was going to have to teach a mammal more than “sit” and “stay” – trigonometry for goodness sake! – push him into some anti-Zen state of mindlessness? Do all parents-to-be think they’re going to be edgy and show Critters the world-as-it-is only to find themselves worrying about all the profanity in the hip hop music in their music libraries?

I have an odd paradox in my head. I want to be honest with this kid. Whisper truths that the child may not understand immediately but will grasp earlier because of the foundation. On the other hand, I’m as certain as I sit here that we’ll tell the child fantastic lies, whether to stimulate a rich inner world of beautiful imagination … or because oh my god I need to sleep and the BIG MONSTER WILL EAT YOU IF YOU DON’T LEAVE DADDY ALONE.

I have to remind myself that the kid will probably be ok. My grandmother was fond in her later years of citing dubious facts, but among the more credible of her tales was her belief that parental conditioning amounted to, at most, 10% of a child’s personality. That’s both alarming and reassuring.

Because we’re only people. We’re the same people we were the day before P Day. Only now we get to raise and educate and care for and prepare a person for life.

How cool is that?

So anyway, tomorrow we try to conquer the box room. It is a room full of boxes. To our friends and family, it is “the room that will be the guest bedroom.” To us, it’s the nursery. We have some time to get it in order but the calendar looks shorter and shorter every day.

That is, after all, how calendars work.