Beginning in my mid-twenties, I started having friends with babies, which was fine. Granted, I don't particularly like babies. They're never really quite as cute as people say they are. Plus, they tend to take my friends away from me, which, I guess, is understandable. Objectively, I am, arguably, less in need of their attention. I can feed myself. I can refrain from shitting in my own pants. I don't drool. The list goes on. That being said, I've never really been excited for a kid before. Or at least I've never been excited in the way that other people seem to get when their friends have kids. For me, their birth marks not only the beginning of a new life, but it also, sadly, signifies the end of something, a place and point in time we can't return to. Lately, that's been changing. Part of it, I think, is that I'm simply starting to get used to it. Though I often act like a child, I'm finally feeling comfortable being the age I am, sort of, and children kind of come with the territory. So be it. Another part, and this, perhaps even more so, is that the kids are happening closer and closer to home. Whereas their lives have, in the past, occurred primarily in my periphery, gurgling and crying from a relatively safe distance on the outskirts of my circle of acquaintances, a child has, just yesterday, finally arrived full center in the middle of my life.
There are friends, and there are friends you make into your family. I've known Bill since I was thirteen, Crystal since I was twenty two. Notwithstanding a couple years of self-indulgent stubbornness on my part, the three of us, in some form or another, have been bound by more than a general admiration for each other and an ability to have fun. For me, I am drawn to Bill and Crystal because I respect them. They live the way that people ought to live, simply, generously, and in immediate contact with both their social and ecological communities, which is not an easy task, but perhaps it is the only one. Every time I visit them at their home, a renovated Church tucked neatly into the rural Wisconsin countryside, when I watch Bill followed by his old dog across the yard, Crystal kneeling in the garden in the back ground pulling nettle, I am reminded not only of where I am, but where I'm coming from, the mid-sized cities of Wisconsin, Iowa, and Montana where I have lived and gone to school and written for the last ten years or so, sustaining myself, but only barely. In large part because of Crystal, Bill, maybe more than any of my other friends, is more directly rooted in his small portion of the world, committed deeply to and actively engaged in the place where Franklin Fox, their newborn baby boy, will ultimately grow up. I mention this in contrast to myself and to the majority of my closest friends because I, unlike Bill, am not committed anywhere, to anything outside myself and my obsessions as a writer. Something tells me that to be a father, or at least a good one, you have to be willing to give up a portion of yourself for the sake of the son or daughter. I have no doubts that Bill will be able to do this, nor do I that Crystal will guide the both of them with the intelligence and grace she so readily possesses. And I am incredibly excited about this. The first thing I did this morning when I found out that Frank was fine and healthy was grab my phone. I just wanted to tell somebody, to share the fact that I was happy. Then I sat down to write this. I feel lucky that Franklin came a little early and I get to meet him before I go. I look forward to being in his life, to see him turn into a person. And for him to be in my life, maybe I need that also. Actually, I'm sure of it.
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