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The Quest of Josh: There’s a popular sentiment that all babies are cute. I don’t buy it. Of course there are cute babies. There are also babies that look like angry old men in miniature. I’ve seen babies that look like hairless cats, shaved Ewoks, and heartbroken raisins. My own baby picture looks like a sunburned Eskimo choking on a lemon. My brother, of course, was cute like babies are supposed to be cute. That’s fine. I got better with age. My brother now looks like Bigfoot. Babies, also, are loud. I don’t know where the volume knob is on a baby, but the only setting I could ever find seemed to be “Louder.” Moral: Don’t twist the noses or fingers, or even the outties, of a baby in hopes of quieting it down. (You’d think the outtie had to be good for SOMEthing, but it really seems to just be a mini love handle.) Don’t even get me started on “messy.” I’ve been in the homes of people with children. Everything worth playing with is at least four feet off the ground, and one out of every five places to sit are stained with juice, baby food, or…something else. You have to wear your shoes all the time, to avoid impaling yourself on the shard of a broken toy; and at the same time you have to tread lightly, to avoid breaking some miraculously-unbroken item, or, even worse, tripping over the unsuspecting baby as he/she/it sits blithely relaxing or crying in the middle of the hallway, room, or yard. Baby-houses are terrifying places to try relaxing in. And that’s before you even try picking one of the spitting, peeing, vomiting little creatures up. It doesn’t come as a surprise to the reader, then, to learn that I’m not a fan of babies. Or, to clarify, have not been. At the same time, looking at the tirade I just offered to you, I’m reminded of the famous Shakespearean quote, “Methinks the columnist doth protest too much.” I can’t explain it, and I can’t honestly say I like it, but I find myself being increasingly charmed by babies and little kids in recent months. Not all. Many babies still look like pissed-off aliens. But, enough of them that I’m forced to pause and do a bit of reflection.
Everyone talks about the biological clock. Women can’t have babies after a certain age, unless they luck (or un-luck) out and beat the odds, and at any rate there are significant health risks for both mother and child. When a woman starts to look a bit wild-eyed for a serious relationship in her early to mid thirties, or sometimes even younger, the standard excuse she gives is “My biological clock is ticking! I need to get married and have babies!” This is usually said out of the earshot of most men, to the relief of all, but we all still know it’s true. No one talks about a biological clock for men. The pump might slow down, but it never stops. Some people actually believed that J. Howard Marshall was Danielynn’s father. (I personally was pulling for Charlie Chaplin.) There’s no popular opinion that men should mind their age when hitting the sheets. Thank goodness for the Internet. Now I know that while I don’t have menopause to worry about, there’s a thing called “andropause” that is waiting for me as I near forty. Dr. Harry Fisch is responsible for spreading this new vocabulary word, in his book The Male Biological Clock: Startling News about Aging, Sexuality and Fertility in Men. If one were to take Fisch seriously (and he gives compelling reasons to do so), men are twice as likely to be infertile at 35 as they are at 25. Not only that, but Fisch and his peers have linked all kinds of health issues, from Down’s syndrome to schizophrenia, to the male half of the reproductive process. Enough of the textbook crap. Point is, even though we can have kids at any age, the biological concerns in baby making don’t stop with the woman. That’s right, boys! Something else to blame on us! So maybe, under all our machismo and “I don’t know nothing about birthin’ no babies” bluster, there is a bit of a biological drive that makes fatherhood more appealing in our thirties, as opposed to our forties or even later. If there’s anything scarier than the thought of a toddler tearing around my apartment, it’s the thought of a schizophrenic toddler tearing around my apartment. But there has to be more than that, hasn’t there? Just because I’m edging past my peak years for procreation, suddenly I feel like I should? I hate being told what to do. Even by my own body. The thing is,
I’ve been noticing a lot more men with their kids in recent months.
A father on the subway, doing his best to read with his three
peacefully sleeping daughters piled up on his lap like stuffed animals.
The guy trying to teach his little girl how to throw a ball,
while his little boy tries to climb him like a tree.
The guy ruffling his son’s unkempt mop of hair, while the
toddler beams up at him like having his hair messed up was the best
thing in the world, as long as Dad was doing it.
Very movie-about-a-father-and-his-kid stuff.
And instead of the familiar old “There but for the grace of God
go I,” I find myself thinking, “I can totally see myself doing that. Whaaaat?? I am a selfish man, a private man. My relationships fail because I keep to myself more than my partners would like. I work and play well with others, but I prefer to live alone. So now I’m thinking kids? Back to the Net. What’s up with this sudden wistfulness for the bringing-up of a Mini-Me? What psychological explanation can there be for my sudden shift in perception? But in this search, I came up with nothing. No justification for this misplacement of my wits. Under “paternal instinct,” the only thing I could find was countless reviews of a Canadian play called “Paternal Instinct,” about two gay men raising a child together. Out of curiosity I Googled “maternal instinct” too, and the fourth entry listed it as the title of a “Stargate: SG-1” episode, so that made me feel a little better. Nothing, then. On my own for answers. Either the link between this strange new “andropause” and my increasing fascination with the idea of fatherhood runs more deeply than I give it credit for, or I’m evolving (I hate the word “maturing”) into a place where I’m more ready, and willing, to give that idea more attention. The strange thing is that I feel more ready for fatherhood than I do for marriage, which poses problems because single parenthood is not my first choice. Besides, women can go to the sperm bank. My options are more limited. A close friend and
I have an agreement of sorts. In
about two years, if we’re both still childless, unmarried, and living
in the same city, we’ll try raising a kid together.
Pretty sweet deal, because she’s no more excited about marriage
than I am. We’d figure out
the logistics somehow, but that kid would have two active parents, my
friend and I would have one more way to be close, and we’d all live
happily ever after. How much
of that pact was found at the bottom of the second bottle of wine, I
couldn’t honestly say. But
at least there’s hope. At
least I have an emergency plan. My
poor father might actually get to take his grandkids to Disneyworld
someday, after all. |
coming soon!
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