late night musings

Can't sleep. Not that I've tried for long tonight, but I'm just not tired at all. I found myself feeling my overful stomach and noticing the patterns of light leaking from under the curtains on the cluttered floor next to the bed. Perhaps I'm up because the new year is stretching out before me in all its possibility. Obviously a lot is going to happen this year, what with Miss Ella on her way. And I've entered this period of restlessness — probably egged on by the same upcoming event — which I'm trying to figure out what to do about. Possibility is a good word for this year. This looks to be a year of new beginnings. I have this sense that I need to shake off the dust that's settled on me — this crust that I've allowed to cover over the connection between me and whatever metaphor you feel like using for creative energy. My self, which tends toward the complacent end of the spectrum, needs, I think, to be smacked a little bit around the face to get him to wake up and start looking before he puts his foot down, or opens his mouth. Or, as I've said before and will say ad nauseum for the forseeable future, my self needs to get his increasingly wide ass off the couch and start moving forward, and to start looking ahead again. My life is going to change, as I'm being told by everyone who has a child or knows someone who has a child (do the math — that's a lot of people), and I know that. I know that. It's seeping deep in my bones. Perhaps that's the aching I feel in my chest — like a child's growth spurt —that stretching of my mind to wrap around what my new life is going to be about: which is someone other than myself. First and foremost: keeping that someone alive. Second, and equally important: making that someone into a good person, capable of happiness and fulfillment. Third and even more equally important: never letting that someone forget that they are loved.

Somewhere along the line I decided that that was job number one of a parent: to instill in their child a sense of unconditional love. The key word in that sentence being unconditional love. And I mean that in the completely ungrammatical sense of the word(s). Those two things should never be sundered, and I make that the first platform of my tenure as Father.

Alright. There's more to be said — and I had originally planned on spilling all kinds of thoughts and worries on you — but I ran into an old friend on IM and we started chatting about, well, Ella. So, I've lost a lot of steam and am starting to think I can grab some sleep. We'll talk more later.