Baby Love

Fatherhood has changed me. Whereas once I would have entered a hospital room full of hesitation and self-doubt, today I don’t want to enter at all. Beyond this door is a baby. And what do I know about babies? This: they’re odd looking and they break easily.

The door swings open. “Barney!” my best friend, Mike, says. “Don’t just stand there, mate. Come in and meet my son!”

Mike is effecting the obligatory I’m an over-the-moon new dad persona with admirable gusto. But I’ve known him since we were six years old so I see the fear in his shining eyes. I recognize the terror at the corners of his over-smiling mouth. I smell the panic seeping from his paternal pores. Fatherhood has changed Mike as well.

He’s turned into me.

Mike leads me into the room, which is making a valiant attempt at impersonating a hotel suite. The betrayer, of course, is the bassinet at the end of the bed. And Beth, Mike’s wife, who looks like she’s just been through the Apocalypse. “Hello, Barney,” she says.

When she smiles, it’s not clear whether she’s conscious and/or compos mentis. She’s sitting up in bed wearing some kind of sleepwear, so I maintain a safe distance. “Congratulations, Beth.”

I turn to Mike and hand him a gift-wrapped, 1926 first-edition, leather-bound copy of Winnie-the-Pooh. “This is for Oliver.”

Mike unwraps the present, examines it without a word, and hands it to Beth. Then he sniffs at a volume too reckless for a man with a sleeping newborn and wraps me up in a hug so fierce, I wonder if life is about to exercise a one in, one out policy. “Thank you, Barney.”

“I know he’s a bit young for it now, but it was either that or a keg of beer!”

Beth glides toward me.

“Shouldn’t you be resting?” I say in a desperate bid to keep her pajama-wearing body at bay. I am simply not equipped with the social skills to hug women in their bedclothes.

Because she knows me so well, Beth takes my hand in hers and squeezes it tight. “It’s a beautiful gift, Barney. Thank you.” Then she walks over to the bassinet.

This isn’t looking good.

“Come and meet Oliver,” she says.

“Oh, no, I don’t want to wake him. I’ll just admire from a distance.” I put on an appropriately appreciative face, even though all I can make out from here is a pile of dubiously laundered hospital rags. “He’s quite the handsome young thing. Obviously got his mother’s looks!”

Beth lifts the rag-bound bundle out of the bassinet.

I take a step backward.

She advances on me.

Mike intercepts her charge.

I give him a nod of thanks.

“Just wash your hands first, mate,” he says.

“What?”

“Wash your hands before you hold Oliver. We don’t want him picking up any infections.”

I’m torn between asking Mike what infections he thinks I’m carrying, exactly, and congratulating him on his vastly improved appreciation of diligent personal hygiene. It’s a welcome development in a man who thinks sanitizing your hands after travelling on public transport is optional.

When my ablutions are complete, Beth gives me a crash course in how to hold a baby. I’m not listening, of course, because I’m preoccupied with visions of dropping said baby about a billion different ways. So I let her position me with a crook in my elbow to support Oliver’s absurdly small head. She places him in my arms.

Nothing happens.

Well, that was an anticlimax.

Beth draws back the cloth covering Oliver’s head. He looks like an overcooked potato with a receding hairline. “He’s beautiful, Beth.” I look down at his frowning face. “Hello, little friend.” Oliver gives me nothing so I just stand there watching his eyes track back and forth beneath the closed lids; feeling the almost imperceptible rise and fall of his chest; hearing each gentle, whispered breath.

Mike and Beth are watching us, which puts me under extreme pressure to say something profound. I traverse the breadth of my wisdom to find the sagest advice I have for somebody about to embark on the terrifying, soul-crushing, mediocrity-ravaged journey we call life. “Don’t be like me,” I whisper.

Oliver opens his eyes. They’re milky and unfocused. Yet, to my rapturous surprise, they are utterly majestic.

Mike and Beth flank me on either side. Beth puts her arm around my shoulders. Mike ruffles my hair. I get carried away and plant a kiss on Oliver’s forehead.

“Easy, Barney,” Mike says. “No kissing his face.”

Fatherhood makes madmen of us all.