Family is weird

I could just stop the post before it starts. Everybody knows family is weird. Family gets even weirder when a baby is on the way. Family members chime in with slightly creepy joy, someone inevitably makes a really, really inappropriate comment about how you came to be a parent-to-be, and somebody trundles along with the “welp! your life is over!” cynicism. And then there’s the person who observes, possibly innocently, on the physical state of your wife in a way that should simply never be. I think my dad managed to hit all off those yesterday.  A brief word about my dad: he’s emotionally awkward. He’s a loving, kind man, but he’s peculiar. He’d admit that he was peculiar, though he’s from an era that didn’t have our confessional culture, so he’d wring his hands and think it was weird that we were talking about it. Any conversation with my dad contains at least one that makes you want to wander away and crawl under a rock for a good week or two. So when he asked how Ms was doing, I prepared myself. He didn’t disappoint. Dad: How’s Ms? Me: She’s great! Dad: How’s her … Insert a long, long pause here. This is common with my dad. He will sometimes wander off to some other, more interesting place in his brain for a few seconds. I knew, however, that he was trying to work out a way to ask about Critter. Me: What? Dad: How’s her … girth? Me: I’m sorry, what? Dad: How’s her girth? Here he chuckles. Me: I assume you’re referring to her pregnancy. She’s great. She looks like a pregnant woman. She looks wonderful. The conversation goes on like this for a few minutes before he decides to wax sentimental. Dad: You’re going to have a great time.  Me: I hope so. I’m looking forward to it.  Dad: Having a baby will give you great happiness. And if it doesn’t, well, remember it’s all your fault. I honestly don’t know whether he’s referring here to my responsibility to find joy in raising our son, or whether he’s making an extremely awkward comment about how we came to be in this situation. This is my dad. He is odd. As it turns out, I have some of the same affliction. Ms was wandering around the house a couple of days ago in a body-clinging garment that she’d been wearing under work clothes. I don’t understand women’s clothing, so that’s all I’ll say about it. She made a comment that she looked like a very strange superhero, so I said – honestly – that she looked great. She did. Then I told her to fly like Superman, which she did, and I took a picture. Because husband. Later, we were talking about it again, and the following happened: Me: Naw, you look great. Although… Ms: What? Me: I really shouldn’t say it… Ms: You started it. Now you have to finish it. Me: Ok, well, you looked like a little like the performance artist from The Big Lebowski. At this point, there is a pause. A brief but weighty pause. A cusp, you might say, beyond which reality could take two vastly different forms. Happily I can report that Ms bellowed with laughter. She has a good laugh. And I might be more like my dad than I care to...