The Idea of You, Part 2
This is the second part in a three-part series. You can read Part 1 here.
Month 4: Dialogos
Words bring life. If ever you feel so moved to read the bible, you’ll see how it was God’s word that brought light to the world. This is the Greek idea of the dialogos, the word that moves.
You also began with a word. Or maybe it’s more precise to say that you began with an idea, which became words, which became you. And yet, you remain each of these things in part, knowable and unknowable.
Despite the transrational layers, it feels like we’re having a conversation. In this time in which you were conceived, we learned about the malleability of time through the pandemic. I’m feeling that malleability right now as I write these words, this dialogos. I have some sense of knowing you in the literal and in the abstract. We are conversing in the present, but this is also a conversation between future you and past me, future you and future me, future me and past me, future you and past you, etc.
All began and all will begin with words. Words are here to continue propelling us on our course through time together. When I am gone, these words will remain. They will continue to move. Our dialogos does not end.
Month 5: Inquiry
We saw you for the first time yesterday. Until now, you were an idea with a heartbeat. Now you are a body, too. I watched you squirm in gray gradients on TV, saw your long shins, forearms, and the fine bones of your hands. You refused to hold still. Can’t say I blame you. I’d do the same if I were being blasted by sound waves.
To watch you take shape is to watch the hand of God at work. I can study each of the biological processes happening in your mother’s body, but taken together, they convey a capacity that overwhelms anything clinical or scientific. I understand, finally, why there are prophets, sages, and scripture.
What I don’t understand is you. Will I ever? I hope not. Questions are far more interesting than answers. Their boundlessness imbues them with a lovability that you won’t find in an inert answer. Do I truly understand anybody? Is this why I love people so much? What does this say about my love for you? I look forward to the questions you present.
Spring is here. You don’t know it yet, but you’ve had your first taste of rainbow trout. And if you’re lucky, you’ll have your first taste of wild turkey too. It seems this time of sickness is passing. Life has a natural orientation toward growth and healing. In seeing you, you have also taught me this.
What else will you teach me?
Month 6: Education
Who will we be as parents? How will we raise you? Your mother and I have some ideas, but you likely will have other designs. In combat sports, we say that everyone has a plan until they get punched in the head. Maybe in parenting, everybody has a plan until your baby punches you in the heart.
Lately, I think a lot about all the ways I should have died: in car accidents, strong currents, at gunpoint by the hand of a cocaine-addled hunter, near misses in busy intersections, infections and a leaking appendix. Many of these things weren’t my fault, but many of them were. Will you have the same penchant for speed, for mischief, for borderline personalities? How can I protect you from these things?
I cling to something your grandfather (and likely many other parents) said this weekend. No means no. It’s my life raft--maybe yours too. But will that maxim turn me into a tyrant? Will you chafe at tyranny the same way that I do? Will tyranny create the very thing I dread? In this moment, it seems like every book on parenting is useless.
The bigger your mother’s belly gets, the more real you become and the more grounded I become. All of us -- you, your mother, and I -- are moving from the propositional to the participatory. We are moving on a course through time together. As much as I want this to be about us teaching you, it’s just as much about you teaching us.
In isolation, none of us has the answers to these questions. But together, we’ll come up with something, and we’ll keep moving into the future.