I just finished watching the 1986 film "The Mission" again, for the first time in a long time. It was just as powerful and blood-roiling as ever. It made me revisit something I've been thinking about a lot recently--on the one hand just how jaded and flawed the world is, and on the other what our (my) relationship should be to noble, sometimes hopeless causes in this world.
I guess this line of thought started for me in April in the wake of the Mother of All Bombs attack in Afghanistan (remember that?). It got my wife and myself thinking about nuclear war, and how ignoble and pointless it would be to die in an instant, my beautiful boys and my wife and me and everyone we care about, all gone in a cataclysmic flash. No cause we died for, no choice or protagonism in the matter, no larger good we contributed to, just a few meaningless deaths among millions. This then started me thinking that even the righteous, celebrated deaths (Malcolm X as he challenged himself and others to think in new ways about race, Monsenor Romero as he consecrated the Eucharist in a Mass for peace) must have felt pointless at the time for those who suffered them. In posterity we've added the aura of honor and incorporated these deaths into a larger narrative, but the dead didn't get the benefit of these ennobling reframings. From their point of view, they were in the middle of a struggle and got ignobly shot down before they could finish. Dr. King at his death probably didn't feel like the hero we've since made him to be, but rather must have felt frustrated that, after a number of early legislative successes, he wasn't able to convince people that structural poverty and imperialist war were just as inherently, baldly immoral as legalized segregation had been. Malcolm X's death or Gandhi's death must have felt to them like the culmination of the collapse of everything they'd worked for. Only in retrospect do we see these deaths as noble sacrifices to a cause that ultimately won, or at least that was ultimately morally vindicated.
When I was in my teens and early twentites, I yearned to be part of one of these struggles between good and evil, and I revered the idea of a virtuous death in support of a lost cause. I wasn't a jihadist or a Dylann Roof type--rather I was thinking about the sacrifices of those on the side of justice and decency in moments like the Civil Rights movement, or under totalitarian dictatorships, or during the bloody civil wars that racked Latin America in the late 20th century. If you really believe in an afterlife for the pious and the just, then dying should be no problem. But seeing the case of the Jesuits in Paraguay as represented in The Mission (which admittedly condenses about 150 years of history into one coherent fictional narrative) reminded me that I no longer relish the idea of a worthy death.
In part it's probably because I'm more of a coward than I used to be, and certainly because I'm more attached now to the things of this world. I enjoy life so much, and enjoy being around the people I love, and I just don't want that to end yet. Beyond the baser instincts of self-preservation though, I think my reluctance toward martyrdom is because I so worry about those who would be left behind after I were to die. If there is indeed a pleasant afterlife for those who die defending what's right, then it doesn't represent for me the solace that it once did. Dying for the cause is the easy way out--living through the ugly times is much harder. It's understandable that as a callow youth, centered on my own beliefs and principles, even my own salvation, with few binding ties to this world, I would buy into the idea of a noble death in service of God and His people. Go out in a blaze of glory, and who cares what else happens?
From my perch now though in early middle age (does 35 count as early middle age?), such a martyrdom seems almost selfish. What of those left behind? The Guarani left to suffer torture and dispossession and enslavement after the priests are mowed down in pious dignity. The Salvadorans with twelve years of civil war ahead of them after Archbishop Romero is sent to his well-deserved place among the saints.
No, I see that in such a situation, my main thought at my last breath would be one not of glorious ascetic completion, of leaving behind my terrenal existence to enter into oneness with God, but rather a feeling of anguish and worry for those I could no longer defend or aid.
I don't know that this new attitude toward death changes anything about my day-to-day values and actions. What is clear to me is that we are still called to be willing to die for a cause. But I'd rather live for one, rather share in the struggle and stick around to move it forward as much as I can. This is of course selfish too--I want to see some success, not just die thinking the movement might not succeed.
Success is not guaranteed though, and such a desire to see it is unreasonable and unrealistic. Even the greatest among us, Malcolm, Gandhi, Dr. King, Romero, they all probably died with the premonition that their struggle was to fail, and I can't say that such a premonition would be unfounded. Blacks in the US have continued to be marginalized since the 1960s, whether they have insisted on justice by force or by appeal to the better angels of our nature. India has not evolved out of religious intolerance and persecution of minorities. The fight against poverty in the US never gained momentum; the structural racism was never too successfully attacked. And El Salvador is back to a morally turbid state of de facto civil war. So even if these historical figures hadn't died when they did, I imagine they would be disappointed, feel abandoned, as they must have when they did die.
Or maybe they did find solace, not in the thought of impending Paradise, but rather in knowing that they were part of something worthy and true, that whether or not this cause was to succeed in their lifetime or anyone else's, it was the correct thing to do. I think that the great fighters were certainly driven by this conviction in life, were indeed given no other choice by their conscience but to do what was right. Usually this drive must seem like more of a burden and a goad. It is a hassle to do what's right, it is difficult and cumbersome and often inglorious. This compounded by the fact that in the course of doing what's right, you frequently doubt the very rightness of it, the soundness of your own discernment and conviction (even Christ felt this in Gethsemane). My wife reminds me though that feeling you are a part of something, believing in something, is what makes death tolerable, even if it's for a lost cause.
So maybe, just maybe, this red-hot prod of conscience, which denies you solace or complacency in life, does allow you to enter death with some tranquility.
Economic development, current events, travel, sustainable living, and fatherhood, all from an agrarian perspective
Thursday, November 30, 2017
Tuesday, November 21, 2017
Third World Green Daddy 70: Postscript (and postmortem) on pregnant reading
A big part of what motivated me to write my last Third World Green Daddy blog post on what I've been reading during my wife's pregnancy was another book that I didn't mention in the blog. It's called "Expecting", by Gordon Churchwell, and is about a man's experience of his wife's pregnancy. I also picked it up at my office's "library", which is a bookshelf where people leave books they're finished with and don't want to keep. I thought it would be yet another way of really getting into the moment of my wife's pregnancy.
Throughout the book, Churchwell calls for more recognition of and assignment of a male role during pregnancy and childbirth. I can get on board with this in theory, but the author just keeps whining about not being the center of attention, at the same time as he doesn't evince much actual interest in the pregnancy in the first place. So it's really not a good-faith call for more active male recognition coupled with more active male involvement in pregnancy. He's wanting to get, but not willing to give. It's more like when white folks complain about being marginalized when people of color mention any of their own concerns. You know, life just sometimes isn't all about you. I have to say I never went through this feeling of resentment toward my wife and kid, though I admittedly was not surrounded by self-righteous, self-centered, neurotic people as the author seems to have been.
To me, a practical man as Churchwell claims to be would get involved in the practical logistics of choosing a hospital, weighing different childbirth options, stocking up on diapers and strollers and bottles and all the other accoutrements of childrearing. This is a role that a man is perfectly capable of fulfilling, and at least for me it made me feel a "part" of the pregnancy. Or if he were into art, he could make art for the baby, or play music for it in utero. Just make a role for yourself, and do it. However, in the hyper-analyzed world that the author lives in, maybe you can never be satisfied with your role, because you end up simply consuming stereotyped roles for everything you do, or analytically criticizing those very stereotyped roles. For instance, Churchwell speaks of fathers' going to prenatal visits as if it's some sort of virtue signaling, a declaration of being "with-it". But can't you just be interested and concerned about the progress and health of your fetus, without trying to either fulfill or defy some pre-defined stereotype? Again, doing this type of stuff would seem to offer precisely what Churchwell wants--a way for a detail-oriented, technologically and scientifically astute, assertive man's man to contribute his strong points to the pregnancy.
Lastly, Churchwell has a latent derision and misogyny underlying everything he writes. He is scornful and disgusted by how his wife looks and acts, and his first instinct is always to dismiss the concerns of pregnant women or their advocates. I assume he's trying to come off as witty and iconoclastic, but it comes off like when white supremacist internet trolls try to be daring by saying racist things. In the end you aren't being witty or daring, or challenging the politically correct status quo. You're just contributing yourself now to a shitty, oppressive state of affairs that you are too self-absorbed to even realize exists. The author speaks with reverential deference toward an idealized, objective scientific establishment whenever a specific medical procedure is in question, and has difficulty understanding what the big deal is about episiotomy and things like that. He begrudgingly comes to understand the concerns of those who would question some of the obstetrical status quo, but only after the evidence becomes insurmountable for him. Otherwise, he can't fathom why someone (female) might not want people probing them with metal implements or slicing their 'taint with a razor. These concerns all seem pretty straightforward to me, without much need for cerebral equivocating.
By the end of the book he sort of comes around. On the one hand, Churchwell offers some fascinating and well-researched histories of medicine and childbirth, as well as an in-depth exploration of the (circa 2000) latest research on the physiological changes that take place in men and women during pregnancy and parenthood. Seemingly aided by this, Churchwell gets more interested in his wife's pregnancy by the seventh month or so, and takes on a less self-centered voice. So I ended the book on a positive note, appreciating his exploration of how having and raising children changes us profoundly, not only emotionally and mentally, but even with an endocrine, physiological basis underpinning it all.
In researching this blog post, I learned that Mr. Churchwell died shortly after his book was published. This made me waver on even writing the post. I don't want to disparage the dead, and the more I thought about my response to the book's mediocre early passages, the more I thought it probably wasn't even worth critiquing. Then I found an article about his ex-wife, who found out that he had been carrying on multiple affairs while they were married. This confirmed for me that I might be on to something with my detection of a certain self-centered misogyny in Churchwell's work, and that it might indeed be worthwhile to comment on it. Indeed, it made me wonder as I read that what seemed to be such a frank, tell-all account of his life was really hiding a huge part of who he was, the same part he successfully hid from his wife and daughter until his death. I can relate to this--not the unfaithfulness part, but the way in which whatever we write or share of ourselves is inherently an incomplete picture of our entirety.
But again, the real clincher for me is that Churchwell redeems himself in the end, both as a writer and a father, by getting beyond his initial pettiness and egotism and exploring some truly universal themes of how parenthood changes both men and women from the people they were before.
The book started out mildly entertaining, but not quite what I was hoping it would be. The author is by his own admission a self-absorbed consumer living a yuppie life in Park Slope, Brooklyn. So a lot of the themes he touches on seem less universal and relatable, as one man reading another's experience of manhood and pregnancy, and more the idiosyncratic whinings of someone very much defined by his rarified, hard-to-relate, super-bourgeois New York City context. He and his male friends seem universally peeved to be distracted from their professional and leisure pastimes (art, corporate achievement, long-distance biking, etc.), and thus see their gestating babies as a threat to their high-income, low-responsibility lifestyle. They are pissed off at their wives, who are all self-absorbed uber-mommies, living every cliche to a T as they lose all interest in life outside of their own uterus. Very little of this was relatable to me--I mean, if you really don't want a baby, just don't have one. It's no big deal. The attitude that most resonated with me was a pithy, throwaway (but well-executed) description of a proverbial Mexican peasant family:
Peasants in Mexico don't think like this. Pregnant! Happy! Celebrate! Another baby? We'll have four sleeping in our bed instead of three. We'll feed them. We'll work harder. We'll make more tortillas. They have a very different attitude about life. Children are treasures.Aside from the condescending and racist overtones of this characterization, I found myself much more on the same page as these peasants, not as the hypereducated "East Coast liberal" caricatures that seem to actually populate the reality the author lives in. Frankly I think a bit of benign neglect, both toward their own self-image and pastimes, as well as toward their future kids, who will surely become yet another manifestation of their self-absorbed way of living, would do well for all of these parents-to-be.
Throughout the book, Churchwell calls for more recognition of and assignment of a male role during pregnancy and childbirth. I can get on board with this in theory, but the author just keeps whining about not being the center of attention, at the same time as he doesn't evince much actual interest in the pregnancy in the first place. So it's really not a good-faith call for more active male recognition coupled with more active male involvement in pregnancy. He's wanting to get, but not willing to give. It's more like when white folks complain about being marginalized when people of color mention any of their own concerns. You know, life just sometimes isn't all about you. I have to say I never went through this feeling of resentment toward my wife and kid, though I admittedly was not surrounded by self-righteous, self-centered, neurotic people as the author seems to have been.
To me, a practical man as Churchwell claims to be would get involved in the practical logistics of choosing a hospital, weighing different childbirth options, stocking up on diapers and strollers and bottles and all the other accoutrements of childrearing. This is a role that a man is perfectly capable of fulfilling, and at least for me it made me feel a "part" of the pregnancy. Or if he were into art, he could make art for the baby, or play music for it in utero. Just make a role for yourself, and do it. However, in the hyper-analyzed world that the author lives in, maybe you can never be satisfied with your role, because you end up simply consuming stereotyped roles for everything you do, or analytically criticizing those very stereotyped roles. For instance, Churchwell speaks of fathers' going to prenatal visits as if it's some sort of virtue signaling, a declaration of being "with-it". But can't you just be interested and concerned about the progress and health of your fetus, without trying to either fulfill or defy some pre-defined stereotype? Again, doing this type of stuff would seem to offer precisely what Churchwell wants--a way for a detail-oriented, technologically and scientifically astute, assertive man's man to contribute his strong points to the pregnancy.
Lastly, Churchwell has a latent derision and misogyny underlying everything he writes. He is scornful and disgusted by how his wife looks and acts, and his first instinct is always to dismiss the concerns of pregnant women or their advocates. I assume he's trying to come off as witty and iconoclastic, but it comes off like when white supremacist internet trolls try to be daring by saying racist things. In the end you aren't being witty or daring, or challenging the politically correct status quo. You're just contributing yourself now to a shitty, oppressive state of affairs that you are too self-absorbed to even realize exists. The author speaks with reverential deference toward an idealized, objective scientific establishment whenever a specific medical procedure is in question, and has difficulty understanding what the big deal is about episiotomy and things like that. He begrudgingly comes to understand the concerns of those who would question some of the obstetrical status quo, but only after the evidence becomes insurmountable for him. Otherwise, he can't fathom why someone (female) might not want people probing them with metal implements or slicing their 'taint with a razor. These concerns all seem pretty straightforward to me, without much need for cerebral equivocating.
By the end of the book he sort of comes around. On the one hand, Churchwell offers some fascinating and well-researched histories of medicine and childbirth, as well as an in-depth exploration of the (circa 2000) latest research on the physiological changes that take place in men and women during pregnancy and parenthood. Seemingly aided by this, Churchwell gets more interested in his wife's pregnancy by the seventh month or so, and takes on a less self-centered voice. So I ended the book on a positive note, appreciating his exploration of how having and raising children changes us profoundly, not only emotionally and mentally, but even with an endocrine, physiological basis underpinning it all.
In researching this blog post, I learned that Mr. Churchwell died shortly after his book was published. This made me waver on even writing the post. I don't want to disparage the dead, and the more I thought about my response to the book's mediocre early passages, the more I thought it probably wasn't even worth critiquing. Then I found an article about his ex-wife, who found out that he had been carrying on multiple affairs while they were married. This confirmed for me that I might be on to something with my detection of a certain self-centered misogyny in Churchwell's work, and that it might indeed be worthwhile to comment on it. Indeed, it made me wonder as I read that what seemed to be such a frank, tell-all account of his life was really hiding a huge part of who he was, the same part he successfully hid from his wife and daughter until his death. I can relate to this--not the unfaithfulness part, but the way in which whatever we write or share of ourselves is inherently an incomplete picture of our entirety.
But again, the real clincher for me is that Churchwell redeems himself in the end, both as a writer and a father, by getting beyond his initial pettiness and egotism and exploring some truly universal themes of how parenthood changes both men and women from the people they were before.
Saturday, November 11, 2017
Third World Green Daddy 69: Reading my way through a pregnancy
When I recently got the news that my wife was pregnant again, I was sublimely ecstatic. Of course I had been thrilled when I learned of the prior two pregnancies, but this pregnancy was different, both in how unexpected it was, and how expectant I was.
During my wife's pregnancy with Sam, I was very active, very conscious of the pregnancy and getting ready for the childbirth and childrearing. He would be my first biological child, and in my typical busybody fashion I set about doing all sorts of logistical preparations: getting or making clothes and other supplies, setting up hospital logistics, figuring out bottles and breastpumps and diapers, But I was so busy doing, and it was all so new, that it sort of went by in a flash, and I couldn't step back and think about it.
When Paulo was in the womb, I was less conscious than with Sam. Caro and I had worked out the mechanics and logistics once before, so they didn't require as much time or thought. In addition, we went through four jobs and five living spaces in the course of Paulo's pregnancy, so I for one was sort of overwhelmed, just keeping my head above water. I was much more involved in Paulo's childbirth itself than I had been with Sam, but when I finally did catch my breath, I realized that that pregnancy had gone by again in a flash, and I had been even less able to stop and enjoy it than with Sam's gestation. Where I'd written fifty-some Third World Green Daddy blogs during Sam's first few years, I wrote just a few during Paulo's gestation and infancy, and these were often way late. Witness my writing about life in DC almost a year after we'd left--I just didn't have much time to write when I was trying to juggle a new job and a new baby.
But in the four years since my second son was born, I have taken on much more of the parenting duties, and I feel like I've grown a lot as a person in the process. I am calmer, wiser, better able to focus on what I really consider a priority for myself, and to prune out things that aren't as important to me. I have come to appreciate the personalities and quirks and strengths and weaknesses of two very different little people, and also to adapt myself to how they see things, how they experience the world. Each milestone of Paulo's took on special significance for me, since I also saw it as the end of something. When he stopped breastfeeding, I thought, "That is the last time we'll breastfeed a baby." When he outgrew clothes I put them aside, assuming they'd have to wait years until our grandkids came along. When he lost interest in a particular baby book, I thought that I would be putting aside that part of me and of our relationship, at least until a grandkid and perhaps forever. This letting-go was the bookend to that first joyous discovery, when I was 28 and with newborn in hand, that I was recalling the songs and stories and shared rituals that my parents had given me and that had lain dormant for 20 years or more in my mind and heart. Now I would have to deactivate that part of me that had been reactivated for the last five years or so. I think this was less traumatic for Caro, since Paulo was her third child (arriving 18 years after her first), and she had really been able to enjoy and cherish these moments with him.
But for a few years now Caro and I have been considering bringing another child on board. We've looked into adoption in the three countries we have ties to, but because of our mobile, transient lifestyle, we haven't found a way to make it happen. Each country's adoption authority is accustomed to dealing with people who live there long-term, who have community ties the agency can interview, a permanent household the agency can visit. We just don't quite fit into that box.
At the same time we've gone back and forth on whether to have another birth child. Caro was pretty happy to finally be getting her "normal" body back, after years of pregnancy and post-pregnancy and then the unexpected sedentary office lifestyle that we had been able to avoid during our years in Colombia, before Sam came along. I was worried about population pressure on the world scale and adding my own little bit to it. But then we'd have spells of dreaming of a new baby, of all the special moments and rites and warmth. It didn't seem to make much difference in any case, since even when we were in a "trying" phase (or at least not an actively "preventing" phase), Caro wasn't getting pregnant. She figured that age or mileage or the inevitable medical travails that accumulate over a lifetime had gotten the better of her reproductive apparatus.
This was fine--we're flexible and tend to accept what life gives us. I did though sometimes recall with nostalgia the different steps of pregnancy and babyhood, the preparations, the dreaming, the milestones, the siblings meeting a new family member, the pride and the challenges, all of that stuff. And I felt bad that I hadn't had a chance to savor these when I was actually going through them. With Sam I had been so busy living them that I didn't appreciate them, and with Paulo I was removed, trying to get the rest of our life in order while Caro's belly grew.
But then came the Sunday morning when I was sitting on the toilet and little Pauli slipped a positive pregnancy test under the door to me, special delivery from his mom. And since then I've been in a euphoria. I could start all over again! All those things I'd thought I was leaving behind as Paulo outgrew them, could have a final encore performance! And this time I'd be much more aware, much more conscious not only of what I was doing, but of the momentousness and meaning and joy of each thing, beyond the tangible doing itself. I felt like Scrooge when he wakes up Christmas Day and learns he still has a chance to turn things around. Not that I'd been shirking or miserly as a father before, but this pregnancy and infancy I could savor for what it was, neither worried nor uncertain as with a first child, but rather appreciative with the knowledge that it would be my last stab at the experience. I've heard that older parents enjoy and appreciate certain moments more, because they have an accumulated wisdom, and often have known the agony of childlessness, in a way that younger parents don't. I don't consider myself too old at 35, but I do feel like an older parent in this sense.
One of the ways this heightened consciousness has played out is in a voracious desire to read during my wife's pregnancy. With my first son I read lots of fairy tales, poetry, even the Bible to him while he was in utero (I had a lot of free time, as I was not formally employed!). I didn't have as much time during my second son's pregnancy, but we started The Odyssey, and finished getting through it when he was a newborn. In this same latter vein, and influenced by both my sons' current interest in Classical civilizations and myths, I got an edition of The Aeneid translated by the same guy who did my dad's copy of the Odyssey that I'd read to Paulo. I've been becoming gradually more diligent about reading sessions of the Aeneid with Caro's tummy.
I'm also reading a lot for myself. I recently finished The Local Food Revolution, a mind-blowing tome that lays out the pretty bleak picture for human life on this planet in the next few decades (more on that in an upcoming blog). When that got too heavy, I turned to Ruben Dario's Blue, a sort of intentionally frivolous but masterfully lyrical work of what he called "poetic prose", which actually has a lot of astute social commentary hidden beneath the ruby inlays and marble statues and French-style gardens and porcelain fairies. I'm also reading a fascinating biography of Archbishop Romero called "Shepherd of wolves and lambs". I need to finish this in time to give it to someone in Colombia for Christmas, so I'm rushing a bit. It highlights a piece of Catholic social teaching that I've only recently come to appreciate again after years of focusing on the option for the poor: that the rich are in fact often those most in need of ministering and salvation, as they are the ones sinning by oppression, greed, corruption, and the like. So while we need to protect and advocate for and empower the poor, we also need to think of the rich not just as enemies but as souls in need of healing. Romero juggled that delicate balance between fearlessly fighting for the poor, but without demonizing the oppressive oligarchs that he often counted as personal friends.
None of this has anything to do with babies, but for some reason I've been inspired to read these things, and mentally associate them with the current pregnancy. More explicitly baby-related is Dr. Spock's book of childrearing, which thus far I've just skimmed to learn more about what Sam and Paulo are going through developmentally at this point. My wife has a plethora of childbirth books related to her part-time vocation as a doula. Most of these aren't too interesting to me, but there's one called the Birth Partner that is next on my reading list.
Lastly, I found a book called Baby Bargains (the 2004 edition or so) in the free library shelf at my office. I wanted to check it out to make sure we're covering all the bases in terms of getting the basic supplies--diapers, crib, stroller, etc. My wife wouldn't have done it--she hates consumerism more than I do, and is particularly set off by the US style of scientific consumerism epitomized by this tome, which basically gives advice on how to shave a few dollars off the price of a lot of shit you probably don't need anyway. Anyway, I've now done my due diligence, and feel reaffirmed in my conviction that we don't need that book, and can just get our diapers and bottles and stuff the same places we always have.
Of course this list wouldn't be complete without some stuff for my current boys. We've been plugging away at a great translation of the Arabian Nights for a few months now, and they love that, but I've also made a point to do regular readings of Where Did I Come From?, which has a very useful, concise month-by-month breakdown of fetal development. This gives a nice complement to bringing our boys to ultrasounds and planning what they can do to take care of the baby (one guy wants to do bottle and pijama detail, while the other is oddly fascinated by changing diapers!), all in the spirit of getting them involved and excited.
During my wife's pregnancy with Sam, I was very active, very conscious of the pregnancy and getting ready for the childbirth and childrearing. He would be my first biological child, and in my typical busybody fashion I set about doing all sorts of logistical preparations: getting or making clothes and other supplies, setting up hospital logistics, figuring out bottles and breastpumps and diapers, But I was so busy doing, and it was all so new, that it sort of went by in a flash, and I couldn't step back and think about it.
When Paulo was in the womb, I was less conscious than with Sam. Caro and I had worked out the mechanics and logistics once before, so they didn't require as much time or thought. In addition, we went through four jobs and five living spaces in the course of Paulo's pregnancy, so I for one was sort of overwhelmed, just keeping my head above water. I was much more involved in Paulo's childbirth itself than I had been with Sam, but when I finally did catch my breath, I realized that that pregnancy had gone by again in a flash, and I had been even less able to stop and enjoy it than with Sam's gestation. Where I'd written fifty-some Third World Green Daddy blogs during Sam's first few years, I wrote just a few during Paulo's gestation and infancy, and these were often way late. Witness my writing about life in DC almost a year after we'd left--I just didn't have much time to write when I was trying to juggle a new job and a new baby.
But in the four years since my second son was born, I have taken on much more of the parenting duties, and I feel like I've grown a lot as a person in the process. I am calmer, wiser, better able to focus on what I really consider a priority for myself, and to prune out things that aren't as important to me. I have come to appreciate the personalities and quirks and strengths and weaknesses of two very different little people, and also to adapt myself to how they see things, how they experience the world. Each milestone of Paulo's took on special significance for me, since I also saw it as the end of something. When he stopped breastfeeding, I thought, "That is the last time we'll breastfeed a baby." When he outgrew clothes I put them aside, assuming they'd have to wait years until our grandkids came along. When he lost interest in a particular baby book, I thought that I would be putting aside that part of me and of our relationship, at least until a grandkid and perhaps forever. This letting-go was the bookend to that first joyous discovery, when I was 28 and with newborn in hand, that I was recalling the songs and stories and shared rituals that my parents had given me and that had lain dormant for 20 years or more in my mind and heart. Now I would have to deactivate that part of me that had been reactivated for the last five years or so. I think this was less traumatic for Caro, since Paulo was her third child (arriving 18 years after her first), and she had really been able to enjoy and cherish these moments with him.
But for a few years now Caro and I have been considering bringing another child on board. We've looked into adoption in the three countries we have ties to, but because of our mobile, transient lifestyle, we haven't found a way to make it happen. Each country's adoption authority is accustomed to dealing with people who live there long-term, who have community ties the agency can interview, a permanent household the agency can visit. We just don't quite fit into that box.
At the same time we've gone back and forth on whether to have another birth child. Caro was pretty happy to finally be getting her "normal" body back, after years of pregnancy and post-pregnancy and then the unexpected sedentary office lifestyle that we had been able to avoid during our years in Colombia, before Sam came along. I was worried about population pressure on the world scale and adding my own little bit to it. But then we'd have spells of dreaming of a new baby, of all the special moments and rites and warmth. It didn't seem to make much difference in any case, since even when we were in a "trying" phase (or at least not an actively "preventing" phase), Caro wasn't getting pregnant. She figured that age or mileage or the inevitable medical travails that accumulate over a lifetime had gotten the better of her reproductive apparatus.
This was fine--we're flexible and tend to accept what life gives us. I did though sometimes recall with nostalgia the different steps of pregnancy and babyhood, the preparations, the dreaming, the milestones, the siblings meeting a new family member, the pride and the challenges, all of that stuff. And I felt bad that I hadn't had a chance to savor these when I was actually going through them. With Sam I had been so busy living them that I didn't appreciate them, and with Paulo I was removed, trying to get the rest of our life in order while Caro's belly grew.
But then came the Sunday morning when I was sitting on the toilet and little Pauli slipped a positive pregnancy test under the door to me, special delivery from his mom. And since then I've been in a euphoria. I could start all over again! All those things I'd thought I was leaving behind as Paulo outgrew them, could have a final encore performance! And this time I'd be much more aware, much more conscious not only of what I was doing, but of the momentousness and meaning and joy of each thing, beyond the tangible doing itself. I felt like Scrooge when he wakes up Christmas Day and learns he still has a chance to turn things around. Not that I'd been shirking or miserly as a father before, but this pregnancy and infancy I could savor for what it was, neither worried nor uncertain as with a first child, but rather appreciative with the knowledge that it would be my last stab at the experience. I've heard that older parents enjoy and appreciate certain moments more, because they have an accumulated wisdom, and often have known the agony of childlessness, in a way that younger parents don't. I don't consider myself too old at 35, but I do feel like an older parent in this sense.
One of the ways this heightened consciousness has played out is in a voracious desire to read during my wife's pregnancy. With my first son I read lots of fairy tales, poetry, even the Bible to him while he was in utero (I had a lot of free time, as I was not formally employed!). I didn't have as much time during my second son's pregnancy, but we started The Odyssey, and finished getting through it when he was a newborn. In this same latter vein, and influenced by both my sons' current interest in Classical civilizations and myths, I got an edition of The Aeneid translated by the same guy who did my dad's copy of the Odyssey that I'd read to Paulo. I've been becoming gradually more diligent about reading sessions of the Aeneid with Caro's tummy.
I'm also reading a lot for myself. I recently finished The Local Food Revolution, a mind-blowing tome that lays out the pretty bleak picture for human life on this planet in the next few decades (more on that in an upcoming blog). When that got too heavy, I turned to Ruben Dario's Blue, a sort of intentionally frivolous but masterfully lyrical work of what he called "poetic prose", which actually has a lot of astute social commentary hidden beneath the ruby inlays and marble statues and French-style gardens and porcelain fairies. I'm also reading a fascinating biography of Archbishop Romero called "Shepherd of wolves and lambs". I need to finish this in time to give it to someone in Colombia for Christmas, so I'm rushing a bit. It highlights a piece of Catholic social teaching that I've only recently come to appreciate again after years of focusing on the option for the poor: that the rich are in fact often those most in need of ministering and salvation, as they are the ones sinning by oppression, greed, corruption, and the like. So while we need to protect and advocate for and empower the poor, we also need to think of the rich not just as enemies but as souls in need of healing. Romero juggled that delicate balance between fearlessly fighting for the poor, but without demonizing the oppressive oligarchs that he often counted as personal friends.
None of this has anything to do with babies, but for some reason I've been inspired to read these things, and mentally associate them with the current pregnancy. More explicitly baby-related is Dr. Spock's book of childrearing, which thus far I've just skimmed to learn more about what Sam and Paulo are going through developmentally at this point. My wife has a plethora of childbirth books related to her part-time vocation as a doula. Most of these aren't too interesting to me, but there's one called the Birth Partner that is next on my reading list.
Lastly, I found a book called Baby Bargains (the 2004 edition or so) in the free library shelf at my office. I wanted to check it out to make sure we're covering all the bases in terms of getting the basic supplies--diapers, crib, stroller, etc. My wife wouldn't have done it--she hates consumerism more than I do, and is particularly set off by the US style of scientific consumerism epitomized by this tome, which basically gives advice on how to shave a few dollars off the price of a lot of shit you probably don't need anyway. Anyway, I've now done my due diligence, and feel reaffirmed in my conviction that we don't need that book, and can just get our diapers and bottles and stuff the same places we always have.
Of course this list wouldn't be complete without some stuff for my current boys. We've been plugging away at a great translation of the Arabian Nights for a few months now, and they love that, but I've also made a point to do regular readings of Where Did I Come From?, which has a very useful, concise month-by-month breakdown of fetal development. This gives a nice complement to bringing our boys to ultrasounds and planning what they can do to take care of the baby (one guy wants to do bottle and pijama detail, while the other is oddly fascinated by changing diapers!), all in the spirit of getting them involved and excited.