I found myself holding a baby the other day. It wasn’t my baby, because I’m old and snipped. The baby in question belonged to my best friend, Howard. Howard is my age but got married late and is having his first child. Howard’s wife, Yesenia, is closer in age to him than to Jordon Hudson, so the arrival of this baby—her first child, as well—was never cleanly assured. A middle-aged pregnancy means that the mother and child are at a statistically higher risk for birth defects, miscarriage, and other terrifying complications. The mother also has to carry around a bowling ball sitting atop her bladder all day long. Tricky business.
I remember all that from when my wife I had our own kids. I remember the fear. I remember the emergency bedrest. I remember long nights in an alarmingly bustling NICU. You find out you’re expecting and your instincts force you to account for everything that can go wrong. Those instincts don’t leave you. Ever.
Miraculously, nothing major went wrong with Yesenia and baby. The child arrived on the early side, but fully healthy and intact. Ten fingers. Ten toes. I needed to see this baby, because Howard is my best friend and because I had not myself held a baby in well over a decade. My oldest child is 19, the youngest 13. When your kids are that old, your memory of them becomes a great and beautiful fog. I remember dirty diapers, daring crib escapes, and weird noises emanating from the monitor at night that made the baby sound more like a bird going for a scuba dive than a human being. But timelines mix and images bleed into one another. Which one of my kids was a backhoe for Halloween that one year? Didn’t the girl always insist on wearing that one brown sweater every day when she was 3? Which one of them rolled off the changing table that one time? Pictures only jog my memory so much. The rest is a tangle of past faces and days waiting to be revivified.
I remembered how to hold a baby, that’s for certain. In fact, I remembered a lot of baby basics on my drive up to see Howard and Yesenia’s son. I remembered you hold the baby in the crook of your arm, like a football. I remembered how to swaddle a baby, moo shu–style. You gotta tuck that blanket tighter than shit or else the baby will punch out of it. And oh shit, they love white noise! I’d forgotten about the hissing trick, where you can calm down an angry baby by putting your mouth to their ear and doing your best impression of AM radio static. I remembered that suddenly, and now I wanted the baby to cry when I met him, so that I could show off my mannying skills.
The baby was NOT angry when I walked through the door. His eyes weren’t even open. I’d forgotten that newborns sleep basically 20 hours a day, with the few hours they ARE awake always coming in the wrong timeslot. He wasn’t even drooling, and my kids spat up every five seconds when they were babies, like they were doing takes for a fucking Three Stooges short. The little man was fully at peace when I arrived, as were his parents. I felt a little ripped off, honestly. Shouldn’t all of you be tired and miserable right now, like I was? Every veteran parent has a little bit of a sadistic streak when they encounter newcomers to the job. Oh yeah, you guys are fucked.
Then Yesenia handed me the baby and I forgot about all of that. I have no sense of smell, so I couldn’t get a heavenly whiff of the boy’s scalp. But I knew that I was holding something perfect, and I remembered feeling the same way a generation prior. Babies are so perfectly gorgeous and new, yawning little baby yawns and kicking their little baby legs out at random. Babies are the best of us. Vote Baby 2028.
And then, as if on command, Howard’s son began to cry in my arms. SHOWTIME. I held the boy close and gave him my best static.
“Oh, he knows the trick!” Yesenia said. You’re goddamn right I did. The boy quieted down immediately. I still had the touch. Howard and Yesenia would have it soon as well, if they didn’t have it already. I rocked the baby as it drifted back into a catnap and I had a vision of his parents loosely following in my wife’s and my footsteps: assembling bed frames, washing Dr. Brown’s bottles over and over, getting the kid ready for its first day of preschool, watching him grow into a full person. Howard and I never had childrearing in common before this; we are now bound by it. His experience won’t be the exact same as mine, of course. But I can now see bits of my past in his present, and he can see bits of my present in his future.
I handed the baby back to his mother and then ate a pizza.
The next day, I drove up to my mom’s house. Mom is selling the house and moving to a new, more manageable place. Before she can do that though, my siblings and I had to help her clean out the house. My dad died last year, and my mom had lived with him in this house for well over 30 years. My old man collected a lot of shit in that time, and now we had to chuck it. I spent the whole weekend filling contractor bags with ancient files, burned CDs, outdated reference books, and tons of other clutter. There was scant emotional toil in this work—I’d already grieved so much—but every once in a while I’d stumble on a Fun Thing To Remember. A photograph. An old decibel meter for Dad’s stereo. An ugly belt. You hit on these treasures and you get a little moment to stop filling bags and go awwww.
But it was the things I didn’t remember seeing, or that I’d never seen, that gave me a quiet thrill. I had to chuck a file of Dad’s old resumes. I’d never seen his resume before. He was Dad the big company guy to me my whole life, but in 1990 he was just another guy out there in the workforce, like the rest of us. He had to strain to fill a resume, just like I did. Had to go to job interviews and get the “We’ll let you know” spiel, just like I did. And he had to deal with his needy-ass kids, just like I still do! Ever since Dad died, I feel like every old photo of him I see is of him at my current age. He’s 48 and scrambling to pay for college, dealing with fuckers in corporate above him trying to ruin his work, and dying to end his night with a steak and a beer. In the wake of his passing, I’ve learned that when someone you love dies, your relationship doesn’t end. You carry them with you and, through your own continued life, get an even deeper understanding of the life THEY led. Dad died in September and yet I keep finding out all kinds of cool shit about him, and about myself in the process. I feel as if I’m living in parallel timelines: his and mine, all at once. He feels as much a peer to me now as he does the man who raised me. That’s one end of the parenting experience.
The other end of it begins in Manhattan, with a child I just held in my arms and a new father who, like me, will one day become an old one. A great and beautiful fog now envelops them.