Theoddity

Last week I passed a threshold of fatherhood that I didn’t realize was there. It was like an initiation going from brand-new-wet-behind-the-ears fatherhood to oh-God-oh-God-I-am-someone’s-FATHER fatherhood. 

It started with wrestling and deep tummy laughter as Kai, Ivy and I brawled our way from room to room, the girls armed with pillows and myself armed with “The Chin.” My weapon of choice is perfect for digging between ribs and shoulder blades extracting shrieks of breathless laughter. I like my little friend, my little friend “The Chin.”

It was in the middle of this cacophony that Kai screamed she was bleeding. As we paused I saw on her lip blood and then she wiggled her font tooth. And it seemed to me that it would wiggle straight from the gums into her palm. And then the other wiggled. I nearly crapped myself. It’s too early for her to lose her baby teeth!

Apparently not, because a few days later I was sitting in front of her looping thread between thread scouring my mind to remember how my dad tied the knot he used to pull my teeth. That’s when it hit me, my baby isn’t a baby, she’s a kid and more importantly, she’s going to remember this and she’s going to remember what her dad did for her first teeth and she’s actually like, a person-person. Not just a baby person but a person with opinions, and memories and more opinions. Crap, that makes me a dad-dad, not just a baby’s-dad but a dad-dad that has to walk his daughter down a wedding isle someday, and scare her first boyfriend dad-dad. 

When did this happen!? When did I become a dad-dad—then Kai’s tooth went flying through the air and tick-tacked itself to a stop on the hardwood floor. Just like that it was pulled out of her mouth and lay still. Just like that she had gone from baby to kid and she could go as easily from kid to…teen…to adult?

How swiftly the string of time pulls us from infant to adult. If I’m not careful it could I could miss it like a pulled tooth sailing through the air. I’m a dad-dad. I need to slow down enjoy my kid-kids before they’re gone-gone.

When God appeared to Moses to send him to the Israelites to free them, Moses had some reservations. One thing was, he didn’t even have a name for God. So God tells him the following:

” …say to the Israelites: ‘I am has sent me to you.’” Exodus 3:14.

Isn’t that just the strangest way to refer to oneself? I am. What’s your first response? Mine is, “I am what?” I am, that’s all. Doesn’t seem like much does it. 

The dictionary definition is rather short too, ‘action verb, present tense of be’. Then check out the dictionary definition of ‘be’—to exist. Maybe God was saying to Moses, I am existence; there is nothing that exists without me; I am the source of all that exists; I am to be, anything else is not to be. 

Just a thought.

I’ve finally gotten this thing up. But it’s too late to put much thought into a post. My children have been wrapped in their blankets for hours and my wife thumped off to bed sometime ago as well. It’s quiet sitting in the bones of my house. My mind begins to wander, as the encroaching cloud of dreams begin to set on me, to thoughts of quiet and God.

How quiet was the void when God sat in it waiting, without time, for the proper muse to start creation. I wonder, did time start at creation or was time started a moment before or after creation? Is God there now, looking down into time, into my window, into my house, over my shoulder at the tap-tap-tapping of the keyboard reading the keystrokes— smiling. 

Or is He having a cup of tea in Japan. It’s almost 5pm there. I suppose he could catch the sun setting over the pacific. Seems more exciting then eavesdropping on my muddled start.