As you may have notice I’ve neglected the ol’ Blog and Grill
a little bit lately, but those of you with even the most rudimentary powers of
deduction can probably figure out why that is. My son is born!
Donovan Douglas
Wiles entered the world on November 20th at 3:09 a.m. at 8lbs 0.01
oz and 21.5 inches, I think, I’ll have to check. After three days in the
hospital and a grueling 17 hours of labor, my wife and I became parents.
Now that I’ve had him for a few weeks I can confirm a few
things. I forgot who told me this, or if it was even something a friend said or
something I read somewhere, but having a child is both the most difficult and
the best thing I’ve ever done. My life is no longer my own, but in the best of
all possible ways. The time I spend caring for him when he’s fussy or
screaming, changing diapers and fixing bottles, can be a chore but not in the
way that I’ve viewed chores before, as something I need to do and get through
and finish to get back to the things I want to do, like writing or farting
around on the internet or finding some way of wasting my time. It’s a necessity
the way my basic biological imperatives are; caring for him is as natural as
breathing or eating or sleeping, the things we do because we have to but we
don’t mind or resent.
Okay, I’m both rambling and digressing, probably because
it’s almost three in the morning and I’m only half paying attention to what I’m
writing and mostly listening out for his fuss because he’s due to wake up again
any minute. I’ll get back to his birth, at least a little bit. I don’t want to
share a linear narrative of his birth story, both because that’s such a
personal, vulnerable time and, with the exception of the very end, frankly a
pretty fucking miserable one, and most of all because my mind isn’t working
very linearly right now. I mean, it never is, but now less than ever. And this
blog is less about telling stories and more about sharing thoughts and jotting
down memories that I can revisit later.
In that spirit, here’s a few things that for me will always
and forever remind me of the time that my wife gave birth to a child. First of
all, Dunkin Donuts has this sweet black pepper bacon sandwich thingy that I
tried for the first time the first morning I spent in the hospital, when I left
to run out to Cumby’s for a coffee for Kaite. I like it a lot, and I got I
think two more each of the following subsequent mornings. Since we got back
from the hospital they’ve been advertising the shit out of that thing, and
every time I see the commercial I remember that anticipatory excitement of
driving back to the hospital, knowing that any day now, any hour now, it would
happen.
By the way, if you are Dunkin Donuts or Cumby’s, you’re
welcome for that free product placement.
Next, we have Adam Sandler and Adam Sandler starring as
twins in “Jack and Jill,” no doubt the worst movie I’ve ever not-really-seen as
it played with the sound off in the background once the labor really began.
Actually whatever channel it was set to played a number of terrible movies one
after the other, but this was the one that really kicked off that marathon of
shit. And so for the rest of my life, whenever I see Adam Sandler in drag, I
will remember the seventeen tortured hours I spent helplessly watching my wife
in the worst pain of her life.
And finally (probably not really finally, but it’s nice to
do these things in threes) Hitmonlee. Like the rest of the universe I don’t
even really play Pokemon Go anymore because it just became such a grind towards
nothing, but I fired it up a few times in the hospital waiting for the
induction to take an labor to begin. The morning after Donovan’s arrival Kaite
sent me out for chapstick, and while I was waiting in line with a stick of
Burt’s Bees in hand (again, if you’re reading this, Burt, you’re welcome) I
launched that app and hatched a Hitmonlee. Obviously it was… not the most
significant thing I received that day, but now whenever I encounter a
long-legged Pokemon with rubber bands up and down his arms I’ll remember that
exhausted pride and anticipatory excitement I felt as I paid the gas station
clerk and thought about everything that was still to come for the three of us.
Okay, that’s good for now. He’s starting to still again, and
I need to hand him off to Kaite for her shift. I have to get up early tomorrow
for my dentist appointment before work.
