The end of summer
The remnants of Hurricane Hanna are rolling into DC, and I’m sitting out on my porch listening to the rain softly falling. It’s a Friday night, but I’m happy to have a quiet night at home. In the back bedroom my very pregnant wife is already asleep, and in the guest room my computer silently hums, running through some horrid GIS calculations. I feel better knowing the computer is working, for it makes me somehow feel less guilty about taking a few minutes to write. Down in the courtyard, the pool has been drained and covered over by the building management, simply because Labor Day is the official end of summer.
The mosquitoes buzz lazily around my arms, as if they have trouble moving in the warm, moist air. I suppose just as DC waits to feel the hurricane’s winds, just as the political class in this city awaits the elections with all the patience of a payday lender just before payday, so I write. I don’t really know what to expect from fatherhood. All I can do is hope that we are blessed with a healthy baby, and that I do an okay job.
Several parents have told me that I cannot imagine what fatherhood is like. That may be true, but my first reaction is to try to imagine it. Nothing is so foreign to human nature that at its mention we do not try to imagine it.
