The Child of Three Planets

Sometimes I have the tendency to over-dramatize things, so keep that in mind when I tell you this next little story.

On the night that I found out I was to have a son I stepped out onto my deck and looked up at the moonlit sky, free of clouds and full of stars, and I saw three planets.

Just beneath the waxing gibbous sat Saturn, a golden dot that burned a little more brightly than the other points of light that surrounded it. Across the sky and just above the treeline I spotted Mars, unmistakable with its red hue. After Kaite confirmed my sightings using the magic of the internet on her phone I realized that I could see a third planet as well, just beneath my feet. Earth.

And so I came to think of my son as the Child of Three Planets.

You know, I just realized that I never told you his name. We're going to call him Donovan Douglas Wiles, and typing that is actually the first time that I've ever seen his full name written down. I like how it looks! 

Deciding his middle name was the easiest part. In December of 2012 my father, Douglas Allen Wiles, passed away, and Kaite and I always knew that if we had a son, he would have my father's name as his middle one. But the first one? This is only my second blog entry, but you will probably come to learn that I am prone to hyperbole, but believe me when I say that Kaite and I quite literally went through a list of six thousand boy names without agreeing on a single one. 

Literally six thousand. 

We found an actual list of six thousand boy names without agreeing on a single one before we landed on Donovan. She liked names like Grant, Mason, and Jackson. I liked Eddard, Eddington, and Edison. So from now on I guess we have to only have daughters because there are no more boy names we both like. Also it's a really good thing I'm not a single dad, because in retrospect I'm a lot worse at names than I realized when we were having that conversation.

Anyway, we actually met his pediatrician last night. We've been attending a seven-week childbirthing course over at the hospital, and last night was the penultimate session to the instructor brought him in to talk for a bit and answer any questions we might have. I like him at lot because he reminds me of Toby from The Office and because he's a little awkward like me. (Plus, he seems intelligent and capable of giving my son good medical care, which I guess is also important.) His first name is Pete, so naturally I spent the entire Q&A session trying to force myself not to ask him whether he ever considers himself a Pete-iatrician. Of course he deals with dads all day, so he's probably heard that one before.

So next week is the final meeting of that class, but we've got something even more exciting than that coming up this weekend: the baby shower! Now, I've always loved baby showers, ever since I attended my first and only one last year, and I knew I wanted this one to be Jack and Jill style so I could attend. It's all very secretive as these things are wont to be, so I don't know a whole lot about it, but I can't wait! My family is coming up – my mother all the way from Oklahoma – and I imagine I'll be talking a lot about it in next week's entry.

(I actually dreamed about it the other night. In my dream it was a costume baby shower and everyone was dressed for Halloween, except my brother who showed up late and in his street clothes. So if you're reading this, Alex, I'm very disappointed in your dream self.)

For now, let me leave you with my dad joke of the week. Last week I told my favorite joke of all time, so this week I'd like to tell my father's favorite joke of all time. 

Q: What did Humphrey Bogart's rabbit say to Ingrid Bergman's goat?

A: Hare's looking at you, kid!

Ah, that one really takes me back to when I was like four and he told it to me and I didn't get it at all because I hadn't seen Casablanca and also because I was only like four.

See you next week!

Welcome to the Fatherhood Blog and Grill!

I'd like to start off by telling a little story.

I know this is my first entry and all, and I should be telling you who I am and what this blog is. And I'll get to all that stuff, I promise. But I didn't want to launch right into all that right off the bat. I'd like to just ease into it, let it come up organically. So, first, a story.

I've never been a dog person, and I'm still not, though now that I have one I can at least understand where dog people are coming from. Late last winter my wife finally wore me down – though at the time she was still my girlfriend… no, fiancée – and not long after we were riding the ferry back from Martha's Vineyard with Ruby, our beloved dachshund/eevee mix sitting timid between our feet.

Now, Ruby loves us both, but she is definitely a momma's girl. Soon I learned why the phrase "following around like a puppy dog" has entered our common lexicon. My wife is a nurse, and she works nights, and every morning when Ruby and I go downstairs she immediately assumes her regular post atop the couch with her nose pressed up against the window, watching for her car to pull into the driveway.

On the other hand, our puppy is a bit of a coward – especially about loud noises – and when she hears a firework, or a car alarm, she comes running to my office to hide behind my chair, shaking like a leaf. At first this baffled me. Kaite is her favorite. Shouldn't she go to her? But I came to realize that while she looked to Kaite for fun she looked to me for protection. She felt safe with me.

And that surprised me. I'd done nothing to incite that feeling. It was just how she felt. And no one – human, dog, or otherwise – had ever looked to timid, insecure ME for protection before. But I came to grow comfortable in the role, even relish it, and I'm glad to have gone through that realization when I did.

Because in about seven weeks, give or take, there will be a new and tiny person on the planet who's going to look to me the same way, and I want to be ready.

My name is Jeff, and once my son is born there will be so many thoughts, experiences, and moments that I'll want to share and remember. And what better way to do that than a blog? Thanks to the magic of the internet I can share this journey with the world in real time as it unfolds, and then later when my son is 27 or 36 or 45 or graduating high school or getting married or having kids of his own I can pull up these old pages and remember how I felt in the first few years of his life.

Before those years begin, though, I'll use this space to talk about my thoughts on becoming a father, my hopes and fears for the future, lessons I hope to impart, and anything else that comes to mind, I guess.

For now, let me leave you with another little story. The one of how my son came to be.

Thirteen years ago –almost to the day, actually – when I was still in college and trying to make friends, I joined probably the worst horror movie club that has ever existed in the history of either the horror movie genre or clubs. We met every week in the dorm room of a kinda creepy guy who looked like Al Borland from Home Improvement and watched plotless violence from around the world.

I don't know why I stayed in as long as I did, but thank god I did, because one night a trio of freshman girls walked in late and in the darkness began MST300ing whatever garbage Al had subjected us to that night. One of them, the taller one who spoke in an unmistakably thick Boston accent, stood out. She spoke a little louder, wisecracked a little more humorously. It was love at first snark. 

It wasn't until later, over ice cream at the parlour in the basement of that dorm room, that I actually saw her face. And the rest, as they say, is history… or at least it would have been if my angsty college self had ever mustered the nerve to ask her out. Instead I loved her silently from up close for the rest of my college years, and we drifted apart.

At least, until three years ago, when our mutual friend Caitlin – by the way, one of the other two freshmen I met that long-ago night – got married. She and I reconnected over gnocchi at the Olive Garden and she not only invited me to her wedding, but she sat me at the same table as Kaite, quite intentionally. And two years later, she presided at our wedding. 

I'd like to end (for real this time) with a segment that I hope to end every entry with: Jeff's Dad Jokes. Everyone who knows me knows that I've been ready for fatherhood basically my whole life in one specific way. I tell Dad Jokes. I always have. I inherited my sense of humor from my father, who himself was a father for as long as I've known him, and he told some of the daddest jokes I've ever heard. 

I'll start off with my favorite joke of all time. A simple one, and it's short, because you're probably ready to stop reading by now.

Q: What's brown and sticky?

A: A stick!

Hahaha! Man, I miss the days before I'd already told that joke to everyone I know.