DADWAGON

One thing about blogging–and particularly blogging about something as personal and unpredictable as parenting–is that you do feel affinities for wide circles of people you’ve never met. One such person is John Cave Osborne, who blogs about his triplets and more out of Tennessee. Through him comes word of the death of the son of a friend of his, the momblogger MamaPundit. Her 18-year-old passed away over the weekend, more than a month after overdosing on inhaled heroin.

There’s a lot to think about there, including the line that all bloggers must draw when it comes to the personal lives of their older kids–by her own admission, MamaPundit had kept her son’s addiction a secret for two years or so while openly blogging, as many of us do, about her own life and those of her other three children.

But we’ll leave the thinking for another time. For now, it’s just very sad, and a reminder that we just can’t control much in the end. This is the thing that always struck my wife when she was working some forlorn shift at the ER and saw that homeless alcoholic with a gangrenous leg that needed amputating, or treated that inmate who had castrated himself in his cell, or the morbidly obese patient with just half a lung left who wouldn’t stop smoking. All these people were dying, essentially killing themselves, and each time she had a moment to reflect, she would just be caught up in the awful wonder of it all: This was somebody’s baby at some point. They started off on this earth fresh and cute and deserving of no less than anyone else. And look what happened to their lives, the only one each is ever gonna get.

I know it shouldn’t be sadder or hit closer to home because it happens to the child of another blogger, but it does feel that way.

Read through the last month of entries at MamaPundit, and if you’re moved to do so, John Cave Osborne is asking people to donate. You can find more information about it here.

Dads! All that stuff you do because you feel as though it ought to be done? Sense of duty? Spousal supportiveness? Well, don’t even bother. It’s not enough. According to this shady little report (citing “recent research”), men who go to prenatal classes not because they’re enthusiastic about them but out of obligation turn out to be lousy dads.

Well, to be honest, I have no idea which group I fall into. Did I bound into birthing class, clutching my diapering-practice doll and bouncing up and down on the balls of my feet, waiting to hear about the big day to come? Uh, no. Did I slump in on a Sunday, feeling bleary-eyed, with an extra-large cup of coffee, and dutifully take in two hours’ worth of information, helpfully drawn out to ten hours to benefit the slow learners among us? Possibly. Did I find that maybe 10 percent of the class, tops, was fatherhood-related? Maybe. Did I spend a significant portion of my time there throwing odd looks to my wife after that one weird dad kept asking questions about how exactly to cut an umbilical cord? Plausibly.

Fine. Apparently I am going to, as this report phrases it, be a failure at fatherhood. If I’d known, I would’ve ditched my wife for the day, skipped class, and gone to a bar, just so I could fully conform to type.

Note: Extra points to anyone who recognizes the headline reference. Hint: Refers to the nature of sinning.

JP’s great aunt got him a bat and ball for his birthday, which we took the playground for some BP (insert oil-spill joke here). I have to say, JP isn’t all that bad. When he manages to make contact he can put a pretty solid whack on the ball, which makes me inordinately…relieved.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I have no real expectations for JP as an athlete. But at the same time, I find it oddly important for him to have some basic proficiency at things like baseball. Yes, yes, yes, I want him to enjoy it, and he does, even if he enjoys kicking the ball and running backwards around the bases, skipping, shouting, and windmilling his arms as much as he does hitting the ball. That’s good.

At the same time, I do hope he’s decent at sports. Athletics were so desperately important to me as a child. I wasn’t particularly good at anything, but I loved playing–tennis, baseball, soccer, football, stickball, whatever. I want him to be into it, too, and I tend to think that as he gets older, the better he is at these things the more he will want to do them. Or maybe not. Either way, having a boy who can flat rake would be pretty cool.

BTW–one issue going forward could be my total inability as a pitcher. I’m soft tossing to the kid and I can’t find the plate. Pathetic.