Harold John Fladd was born at 4:07 am, last Thurday. He weighed seven pounds, three ounces and has ten fingers and ten toes. He is kind of cute in a goofy sort of way, but he was an enormous pain in the butt to get out of his poor mother.
Harry is named for my grandfather, Harold (never Harry), who was the last real patriarch in my family. He ran a wholesale plumbing supply business in Rochester, New York, but is widely remembered for his gentle sense of humor and for being a gentleman to the core of his being. None of us Fladds have amounted to a whole lot since, except, perhaps for my Uncle Wirt, who was an admiral in the Navy, but then again, he has had to compensate for being named Wirt in the first place, so maybe he doesn’t count.
So anyway, it made sense to name Harry for my Opa and so far, he doesn’t seem to mind. (Harry, that is. How my grandfather would feel about it is open to speculation.)
So far, Harry seems to like my wife a lot and to be fairly suspicious of me, which shows enormous good sense on his part. We are told that he is extremely attractive, but both my wife and I are taking that with a grain of salt – as my father put it, faces in my family are usually used for scaring babies, so we’ve adopted a wait-and-see policy.
Several people have asked me, without a trace of irony, if Harry means more to me because he was born on the same night that the Red Sox won the American League Pennant. I’m afraid not, though I have to say that Thursday was hands-down the best day in my father-in-law’s life. Still, if one is looking for omens, that is a pretty good one.
As I’ve said, it was a rough delivery. Harry’s mother was in labor for quite some time before the doctors decided to open an escape hatch, so she got to bathe in the complete labor experience. This means that the first time I saw Harry is when he was pulled, grey and pooping out of a hole in my wife’s belly, like some poorly-thought-out experiment in puppet theatre. I found this strangely moving, even though I’m not a huge fan of puppets.
A year or so ago, I wrote a column asking readers to tell me about the upside of having children. I was always hearing about the bother, expense and heartache of being a parent, and I wanted a few words of encouragement before I fully committed myself to the enterprise. The results were surprising. Most people who responded fell into one of two camps:
First, there were the many people who told me about their satisfaction with carrying on part of themselves to a new generation. I must confess that I greeted this answer with more than a little skepticism; in a country where we can seem to elect a president who can keep his pants on OR pronounce the word “nuclear”, but not both, looking to the future doesn’t seem to be our strong suit. Also, I very much doubt that they were being so philosophical at the time their children were conceived. On the other hand, one of my first thoughts when I first saw Harry was, “Hey – finally! A chance to get it right!”, so maybe the pondering-future-generations people had a point.
Then there were the poetry people. I received a surprising number of poems about being a parent, my “favorite” going something like:
Ten are the number of his wee, little toes,
Nine are the months he lay curled in my womb,
Eight are the kisses I shower on his upturned face …
I’ll spare you the rest, because it only gets worse from there on in.
I’m not the biggest fan of poetry in the world. I understand that some people need to vent their emotions in verse and that it serves a purpose, but I’ve always looked on it like some other areas of personal hygiene, metal or otherwise – it should be done strictly in private and you should wash your hands afterwards.
That said, in spite of the fact that I have made merciless fun of the poor poet who wrote this, er… tribute, the fact that I cried like Jimmy Swaggart when Harry was born means that I can’t really throw stones on the soppy/emotional front.
I guess that what I’m getting at is that there seems to be a lot to this fatherhood gig that isn’t easily expressed. I’m working on it, but I don’t think I’ll be much more successful at it than anyone else. And I am getting a glimpse at the complaining-about-the-kids thing; Harry is pretty fussy and cries a lot, but I’m sure his mother and I will work that out in the next week or so, along with sleeping through the night and toilet training, because, come one – let’s face it – how hard could any of that be?
I won’t say that I’m happy, because I really don’t do happiness, but I am deeply content. I really like Harry and I’m glad he’s here. I’m glad I’m married to his mother, who is a better person than I am and will help make up for my mistakes. I’m glad that none of my other mistakes got me killed or anything before I got a chance to meet him.
So, welcome to the world, Harry. I hope you have a fun life. I hope you grow up to be creative and kind. I hope you are never on a reality TV program. I hope I remember how perfect you are now when you wreck our car when you’re sixteen. I hope you have a son someday as perfect as you are.
Okay – that’s pretty bad, but at least it isn't poetry.
