Last Wednesday, Nate arose from his afternoon nap earlier than usual, so we were playing together downstairs, just the two of us. We started chasing each other through rooms, like one of those heavily-edited scenes from an old "Three Stooges" short... back and forth across the hallway, in one door, out another. Him leading one way, me leading the other. Run, Nate, run.

Whenever I'd stop to allow my lungs, each 38 years old, to catch up, Nate too would immediately stop, then go all 'concerned man' on me, and yell "Moooore!". This last would be punctuated by an almost unconscious tapping together of his little hands, making the American Sign Language (ASL) accepted sign for "more".

If he loves it, then there should be more. More tickle. More 'choc'! More running. More chasing. More more.

I let the request hang there for a few seconds, and we just stared at each other - my expression fading, his remaining. Then, we were off again, the concern on his brow smoothing as it must in order to run and giggle without concern. He had his more.

And so it was, until it was not.

One thing you'll notice if you spend more than four steps with Nate is that he has no regard for his surroundings, or his personal safety. Jill put it best when she said exasperatingly, "That kid is full-throttle, no padding!"

He usually spills out of doorways in a full sprawl, and often runs forward while looking backward. Running across the backyard, it looks like he's constantly being taken down by unseen sniper fire. He careens through the hallways like a pinball, falling down and popping back up. Falling down, and popping back up. Even as he's jack-knifing back up to his feet like the Son of Chucky, I'll already be yelling to Jill about how many inches just randomly separated us from a raucous night at the ER, or a raucous night at home.

This night, it was to be the ER.

He was running in a forwardly direction but looking in a backwardly one. Heading north, and facing south. Suddenly, two things happened at once - I saw that a collision with my laptop table was imminent, and Nate tripped, which caused his prior forwardly and backwardly directions to converge into a single downwardly one. As he fell, he brought his head around.

From my position behind him, just as the front of his face became the back of his hair, his little head shuddered as his face chonked into the cutting edge of the table. He connected solidly, and went down hard. He lay there in complete silence for a beat, and then took in one great whooping breath, and began to shriek. Even as I scooped him up, I noticed that there was blood dripping from his mouth, and onto his shirt. I got him into the kitchen and tried to gently wipe everything off and survey the damage. It was bad, so I did what I normally do if there's tissue exposed or if someone's choking on something baked or fried.

"Buhbee! You need to come down here!" I yelled up the stairs.

Jill peered through the gore and concurred. Nate and I were off to the ER, with me driving not only in the Sequoia, but also in a cold sweat.

Nate had stopped crying about his ruined lip three minutes after his fall. For the next two hours, he was mostly interested only in thwarting my attempts to keep him off the waiting room's bubonic play-gear, and in pointing to the hand sanitizer on the wall in the triage room, signing "more", and gleefully yelling "Tizer!".

Note: When applying antibacterial foam to Nate's upturned palms, ensure that each hand contains a liberal amount. If, when he holds them up to your face, you are foolish enough to blow the Tizer from his hands, know that this outcome will be expected from that point on. If you blow it and it goes in his face, know that he will initially laugh, then point seriously to his eyes and say, "Hurt. Hurt eyes-th".

More.

Nate was good when the doctor finally came in and performed what appeared to be a gynecological examination on his face. He opened his mouth obediently, and was generally calm and regarded the doctor with quiet, concerned-man curiosity.

"Ti-ZER!" He told the doctor.

The doctor looked at me. "What did he say?"

I explained about the tizer.

"Right. Okay, his teeth look fine. I don't think they were involved."

This came as a relief, as Jill and I both feared that they might have come through from the inside out, but were too whoomsey to look. The gaping part of the wound was oriented horizontally on the left side of his upper lip - the rest of it was just superficially scratched. It looked like half of a Snidley Whiplash mustache. I asked if he was going to have a scar there, expecting the doctor to laugh warmly and reassure me that he was only two, and, like a starfish, therefore possessed the ability to grow an entirely new face in the event of injury.

"Oh yes. He'll definitely have a scar there."

Shit. Maybe it will disappear over time.

"For the rest of his life."

Shit.

"And I'm going to have to stitch up that lip."

Sure thing. I'll be behind those curtains with my shoes in my ears.

"I'm going to need you to hold him down."

Dagger.

I held him down while a burly orderly held his head in place. Nate screamed like a crash-test monkey in a jet propulsion lab. That is, until the doctor gave him a shot of Novocain, at which time his screaming reached a level previously unmatched in the long history of Frederick Memorial, and with an urgency approximating the brass steam whistles atop locomotives in the Old West. He screamed so loudly that I couldn't even hear myself assuring him that everything was okay, and that there was no need to scream so loudly.

Three stitches and approximately four years later, the doctor rolled his chair back and announced that it had stitched together tighter than he'd thought it would, actually.

Now free, Nate clung to me and glared at Dr. Scar.

"Bye-bye!" He said, dismissing him.

Then, he looked down at the bed we'd held him into. "Bad!" he said, with a wave of his hand.

Finally, he looked at me. "Muh-mum and Sam Home!" Muh-mum, Sam, and home... no Liam.

And home we went, to disregarded bedtimes, Muh-mum, Sam, (Liam), and a waiting dinner of non-salty, non-spicy macaroni, juice, and Stove-Top Stuffing - made to order by Muh-mum, who had been in constant contact with us throughout the ordeal.

Liam, who must have been quizzing Muh-mum as to Nate's whereabouts during our absence, solemnly contemplated Nate's stitches, looked up at us, and said, "Act-ually, Naynay has stitches."

Yes, he does.

Later, Jill attempted to put Nate into his pajama top without raking his stitches. Just as his head popped out through the neck hole, he happily shouted, "Boom!", and we laughed the laughs of parents both amused and relieved.

Jill said, "Yep, you're a Boomer. Hey Boomer!"

Boomer just stood there, beaming and smiling his whiplash smile... beaming and somehow not falling, and his face told me that there would most certainly be more.

Much more.

11-15-2007

Fatherhood becomes me.

“You want me to play with blocks on the floor? For an hour?”

No problem.

“Wait. Put you in the laundry basket and run around the dining room? Even though you’re going to wail like you lost a finger when I tell you that Da-da’s too tired to do it a seventh time?”

Okay.

“What’s going on here? You just yanked the tray out of the DVD player, and spiked the delicate remote control into the newly refinished soft heart-pine floor?”

Alright, sir.

I miss them when I go to work. Sometimes when they’re asleep, I want to wake them up (Jill would debrain me). To my detriment, I will usually pick up their juice cup one more time, or read them one more book. Especially if they say “Puh-weeze”, or “PEECE!”, both of which mean “please” in Liamese and Naterish, respectively. Although, now Liam mimics reading the book to me, and Nate’s only good for about half a story before he snatches the book and tries to entice us into a good chase. I can usually bring him back with the guess-which-hand-has-something-in-it game. Or I’ll say, “Where’s Da-da?” and cover my face. Seconds later, fat little fingers will be prying at my hands… then, he’s mine. He’s powerless to resist.

I try to express how I feel about them, and find that all the tired phrases I’ve always dismissed as cliches really do have meaning behind them.

I feel it in Liam’s face when his deserted playground is suddenly overrun by ten-year olds just out of little-league practice, and he panics at the top of the slide. I feel it on the back of Nate’s new haircut as he yanks his hand from mine and runs back out into the flickering storm and disappears behind the shed. I want to get between them and the unknown. I want to protect them.

And as Liam rushes to me from the bottom of the slide and the little-league boys dance like Gremlins against the sunset, I love him. And when Nate toddles back from around the shed and he’s holding a dandelion that he’d seen from his swing and suddenly remembered as we ran from the storm, I love him. And I want to pick them up at the playground and in the gathering rain and just hold them and make them understand that I would do anything for them.

One day, they’ll be the ten-year olds, and the little boys I know now will be gone. And I won’t even notice the difference until I’m reminded by a photo, or a song, or a dinosaur shirt, impossibly small. Or maybe even a dent in the floor shaped like our old remote control. But by then, my perspective will have drifted and all that will be more real than this. And there’s no way I’ll be able to express to them exactly the little people they once were, because from my new perspective, I’ll have forgotten it a little bit myself.

That makes me sad, anxious, and exhilarated—all at the same time. Perhaps “sad” isn’t even the best way to describe it. Maybe it’s more of a bookmarked nostalgia… to be referenced again later, from a different part of the story.

More than I knew I could, I just love being their Da-da.

So yes, fatherhood becomes me. And now, I’ve become fatherhood.