Sins of Father

Who is my father? An adopted man (I began looking up his roots, stopped, I don't have time and I guess I do not care enough) a man with no history, and who does not want one. 

A selfish man who lived his life in pursuit of nothing but his own interests. He hated his job, sure, but he was there first (in order to beat rush hour, it was frustrating for him to have to deal with traffic, so he left the house at six or six-thirty) and came home last, maybe in time for the six o'clock news. Twelve hours out of the house for a job he didn't care about, the job his father did. No imagination. No creativity. Only sitting up late in his underpants, eating cheese and bologna, reading history.

How did I come from this man? Yes, thanks to him (and mother) I have learned how to be wildly out of touch with my emotions, how to be politely passive-aggressive, how to mutter under my breath. How to desire nothing, how to achieve nothing. How have I come as far as I have with parents like these? How did I develop a need to show off, to attract attention, and how did I come to a place where people look to me as a leader?

Has Toni taught me everything? How to cope with being needed? How to make difficult decisions? How to enjoy the air, the animals, other people? How not to suffer fools gladly?

I was feeling dowdy the other day, the weather has been crummy again, we are short on laundry and I never had particularly attractive winter clothes, anyway (like father, like son - we all dress terribly until there is a woman to dress us up) and my hair was longish, it cannot grow too long on my bald head without looking bad. So I trimmed it, but trimmed it closer than normal, and I shaved, trimmed my goatee and I thought, hey, that's an attractive man. An attractive, bald man in his thirties. Not a young man who has grown too old and doesn't know what to do with his life, but a man, a simple man, a man who has a wife and owns a house and is expecting a child and is living a life, and he looks all right.

What if the child isn't healthy? Will I blame myself for not insisting she not have that occasional glass of wine, to not take so much Tylenol, will it be my fault?

What if the child isn't healthy? What will I do? I will cope. I will cope. We will cope. Cope like I was never taught how.

The books say it is normal for a father-to-be to assess their own father in this way. But it is still awful. And he is changing, too. It's not just me. He is becoming like his father in so many way he talks about things without care for whether or not he's being a bore, he foists strong philosophical and religious beliefs on us. He sees the end and he is desperate to make an impact. His father has annoyed him for so long. And now he is annoying me. What a terrible cycle.

It's 11:30.

Nesting

Good morning. Happy Saint Patrick's Day.

Toni's appetite is up, we have been consuming the calories we need (she needs) for the baby. But as of yesterday we were both concerned that the baby isn't moving as much as it used to, it doesn't kick as heard, and only moves occasionally.

She was very upset. She is way behind in school and before spring break her boss let her go with some unfair words of criticism. And she is upset about the baby.

I asked her to call the midwife and she said she would feel stupid, she should have called her days ago and besides, we will see her on Monday and it was last-thing Friday. We went round and round and I began getting upset, the old Father's Rights thing, but I was only getting emotional about it. I froze up for awhile, I was feeling all kinds of terrible things, then it became about me, and it all came spilling out -- well, no, it came in bursts, it was hard. About the first blood test, about the baby disappearing in my head, like we would wake up one morning from a dream, together, and think, weren't we pregnant? Wasn't that a happy dream?

She called. We got advice -- a cold glass of juice and then lie down and wait for kicks. Less than 3 in a half hour. We wait another half hour -- less than four in an hour, call the doctor.

She felt seven faint movements in 25 minutes.

We went out for Chinese -- another good indicator is when you eat, it should move around a lot right after that. She was kicked in the bladder several times after we had begun eating.

Before we called, I wanted to sing to it. I sand the Mockingbird song, and it moved, right then when I started.

We came home. We watched "The West Wing" on tape. We got in bed. We had sex. Toni slept all night long ... for the first time in months.

I am up early to work on the nursery, but I owed myself time to drink coffee, write in my journal, maybe have breakfast. Nothing but work on the house today, and dinner with the Pedacis tonight.

Headache

Every night is awful. It used to be that she would get terrible indigestion just as she got into bed -- and then there was the snoring. 

She is now used to having the indigestion (it is still no picnic, but she is used to it) and I got earplugs -- and just as I was used to those, she now develops terrible head and neck aches in the middle of the night and I rouse myself to rub her head or neck or whatever. She then sleeps in the morning and I feel like shit.

Yesterday (or the day before) she said she never wants to have a baby again and I think she means it. I think I never want her to have a baby again. 

Of course, I was never kidding myself (though I think she was) into believing a pregnancy would be easy. Nothing else is easy, she was always been susceptible to slight alterations in her physical condition. She becomes faint easily, succumbs to heat, she is ill very, very often. I mean, she gets sick all the time and she always has.

After last weekend she missed Monday, half of Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday from work -- and then her boss said some unfair things to her over the phone, about Toni warning them at the beginning of the week about not coming in, and worse, on Friday when she did get into work the boss suggested we threw a holiday dinner party (one which this woman did not even attend) to make up for lost hours last semester.

Toni may have missed a lot of time at work over this pregnancy, but her boss sounds truly fucked-up for some of the things she said to Toni this week and it has made Toni furious.

Would she be getting headaches anyway? I say yes, the books say yes, but this gives her something to really focus on.

For the moment

How is Toni?

Good question. Again, last night, she was up a good portion of the night. After Saturday, she did not go to work on Monday, then tried on Tuesday but could only make it through half of the day. She took another suppository that night but was determined last night not to, hence she was awake. Achy, stiff, pain in her stomach.

She thinks she picked up a flu bug that simply has not gone away -- she cannot take the kind of drugs that would defeat such a virus, they would harm the fetus. So she muddles through. She did not attend the Bradley class last Sunday, but I did. I recorded it for her, but she hasn't listened to the recording, it is still sitting on my desk.

How is the Fetus/Creature?

We do not know. It is upsetting to me that she has been so continually ill throughout the pregnancy, and I do not just mean nauseous, Toni is regularly nauseous at the best of time. I mean sick, writhing in pain, not getting any sleep.

Sometimes I think Toni thinks I am not taking the baby seriously. I know I do not do my reading ... but I do clean the cat box and feed the cats, something she should not do, and I wash the dishes and do all of the picking up, i maintain the order of the house, such as i is so she can be free to be pregnant.

Wait, we're not talking about me yet. The baby.

So the baby, which used to do amniotic backflips, has settled down a lot. We do not know if this is because it is growing very fast now (we are entering the seventh month, getting there ...) or because of all of the medication has affected it. Is it a lot of medication? Who knows, I wish I had asked, but if the midwife said it was all right, maybe it is. We do not know.

What can you do but worry? There's no turning back.

I sing to it when I think to. Beatles songs, Toni tries to get me to sing proper children's songs, I want to sing Cole Porter. I think children's songs are childish. I don't know what effect this will have on the baby, maybe it will arrive smoking a reefer.

How is Dave?

Good question. Little regular sleep and lots of other things going on, it has been quite a strain.

Monday we bought a new board game, listened to CDs and enjoyed each others' company.

Tuesday we watched "The Contender" on video.

Last night friends came over and we ate corned beef sandwiches and played a board game.

Tonight I got Indian food for Toni (it is quite the restorative for her, calm, comforting) and spent the evening ... well, it's just nine and I already took out the trash, put leftovers in plasticware, and here I am writing, something I never do.

I feel more private. Work is work. Home is home. Play is play. In theater all those things overlap. But this feels nice, for the moment.

As will be suggested by the autopsy, Calvin dies sometime between now and next Tuesday, March 13.

Long night

I can't believe it's after five ... what a difficult ... day?

I was really looking forward to the final GULF cast party, which we had last night here at the house. Only the cast and company were here, and that was great. We talked, watched videos -- Toni went to bed around midnight. The cast stayed until 3:30 AM.

Toni was up. She had terrible stomach pain, and was unable to sleep. Even when she could relax her stomach, her back would hurt and if she got her back comfortable, her stomach would hurt. I didn't know what to do, and I had been up since seven the morning before, I wanted to sleep so badly.

By five o'clock I deduced this had gone far enough, I had run a bath for her (to help with the aches) but then she began vomiting and I would rub her back for a while. I tried a relaxation exercise but then her stomach kept hurting and she needed to vomit again. I called her mother (I scared her by calling so early -- but not for waking her, she is always up around four in the morning) and she told us to go to the hospital, which is what we did after consulting the midwife.


From six-thirty-ish until nine-ish we were delirious in a hospital room, Toni on an IV drip to keep her from dehydrating, they observed her, decided she has a rather serious stomach flu and sent us home with a prescription for medication to take care of the nausea. Toni has been sleeping since we got home, I slept for about four or five hours. I am wrecked, my body aches but I am not sleepy enough to sleep.

A Saturday. I was going to do housework but I can't piddle around upstairs while Toni needs her rest -- besides, I am exhausted. I did pay the bills (a few days late) and began tax preparations. Now I am writing. I need to finish benefit letters ... and blah, blah, blah, so many other things.

I wanted to work on the nursery, or at least ruminate on it, that's my next big project. I think. There's always some big project. I think I will call for Monday off from work, I need to catch up from all of this.