FOUR

If you told me when I was, say, 18, that I would be where I am today, I am not sure how I’d react. I have seen and done things I’d never have dreamed of. If you told me I was going to have a daughter one day, well, odds are I’d collapse. 

Never in my life did I expect to have a kiddo. 

Never. 

Heck, I figured it’d be a miracle if I met someone to spend my life with so imagine my surprise. 

I went from loner to husband, to dog-dad, to girl-dad. 

Crazy!

We are IVF parents, and the road to having Lily was a hard one. My wife went through literal Hell to have her. It’s easy for people who pretend to be religious to feign outrage at the process of IVF, but it’s a hard, stressful, and expensive process for families that cannot have a child any other way but it creates a beautiful life that has changed us. My wife had to administer injections to prepare for the process, I had to do my part – small as it was – and my wife had to go through the heartbreak of the initial try failing after losing her mother weeks earlier. The pregnancy put her through hell and going to see updates on Lily at the doctor was both scary and exciting as we waited to make sure she was still OK in there. 

It’s crazy because Lily was “conceived” just as the country and state were starting to shut down for COVID-19. The night we went to the clinic, we had plans to go out to an opera that ended up canceled, went to a fancy dinner – lord, that was scary as the reality of the time set in –  and then we went to a nice hotel. We were trying to make it a special night and it was because of what we started. 

That time was so strange, though, worrying about my wife and the baby during Covid. Going to a hospital that was a COVID hot spot with the work they were doing with infected patients, was surreal. We had our baby shower virtually, and many of my wife’s family have still not met the baby due to their political beliefs, not having ever gotten vaccines at the time, and not being bothered to meet her since. Having a child and experiencing and not being able to share your excitement in person clearly hurt my wife and made it an even harder pregnancy because she was so isolated, but she did amazingly. 

And now this kid. 

She’s so smart, sweet, and so funny. She’s at the age where she vacillates between being a “big girl” and being our baby still. She’s figuring out what it’s like to get older. She’s starting to have her own wants and needs. She has meltdowns. She has moments where she worries about how mommy and daddy are. 

She’s incredible. 

I was home with her for the first ten months of her life as COVID-19 worked its way through the world, and then she entered daycare. 

At four, she is on the verge of going to school but is not there yet. 

It’s interesting that she was born during the election of 2000 and the day she was born, they had finally announced who won after a hotly contested race. It breaks my heart that she will grow up in the world we have made for her. I am still coming to terms with what this world is about to look like, but she will grow up in a dying, war-torn world, a world where her rights are not the same as a man’s, a world where her sexual preference or identity may limit what she can do in life because of arbitrary rules put in place, and a future where she is never seen as equal to a white man. 

We shouldn’t be here. 

She shouldn’t have to grow up in this sort of world. 

But here we are. 

My hope is that we can inspire resilience in her, can instill a will to fight, and a belief in herself and her values. I hope that she can find love to fill her heart and friends to fill her life. I hope that I am able to inspire something good in her. I hope she can overcome the worst of our world and keep shining. 

We are in a world that wants the fast food of instant fame at any cost and I hope that she can find her own identity and personality and not just do what everyone else does. 

I hope this world perseveres and we beat back this fascist tide and finally take the steps toward a bright future. 

What I know is she has shown me how big my heart can be and full my life is. I hate this world but she is a shining beacon of hope and maybe all of th children like her can finally break through the clouds of ignorance and move this nation forward. 

My girl turned four today. 

I can’t wait to see where we are at five. 

…c…