More on being a father:
I find myself falling into some sort of Father archtype. Not as a pretention or conscious decision but rather, it just seems sensible and natural. In many ways I see reflections of my father. For the first time, I feel like I understand him more than ever. I understand his decisions to take the safe road rather than risk the bird in hand for the possibility of two. I feel the same way now. When I was a younger man and full of piss and vinegar, I wanted to conquer the world and take big risks and win the fabulous returns that went along with it. Staggering losses were fine, so long as the net result was a gain. I wanted to "live deep and suck the marrow out of life." To me (then anyway) that meant skydiving, backpacking across Asia, picking up and moving to Dubai or Iceland, or Monaco and doing the expat thing for a few years.
Well, things didn't turn out that way. I met a beautiful woman and shortly thereafter got a job in Charlotte. I moved and she came down a month or so later. We ended up working for the same bank and stayed there for 3 years. Seems like a blur now.
We decided that the South, while not devoid of its charm, was not for us. It just never felt like home. I always had the feeling that I was visiting. No snow at Christmas and heat that would sap the fight out of a rabid pit-bull. When I was driving to work at 7:20 one morning in April and it was 92 degrees and my shirt was sticking to my back I knew it was time to go.
One brief job search later.....
I landed a job w/ my current employer, moved twice (first to MD and then to DE), my job was migrated from New York to Delaware, bought a house and had a kid. All within 18 months. 16 months after that, #2 son arrived. That brings us back to today (or thereabouts).
I saw my penchant for wild (and sometimes stupid and childish) risks disappear very shortly after my elest son was born. I knew that I had a tremendous responsibility to him and to my wife to make sure that I was there for them and that I could provide for them. I knew the void that father's can leave when they go. It's bad enough when it happens due to death by illness or accident, but the other reasons are even worse. There was no way I was going to risk inflicting such harm on my child for something stupid like skydiving.
I find myself falling into some sort of Father archtype. Not as a pretention or conscious decision but rather, it just seems sensible and natural. In many ways I see reflections of my father. For the first time, I feel like I understand him more than ever. I understand his decisions to take the safe road rather than risk the bird in hand for the possibility of two. I feel the same way now. When I was a younger man and full of piss and vinegar, I wanted to conquer the world and take big risks and win the fabulous returns that went along with it. Staggering losses were fine, so long as the net result was a gain. I wanted to "live deep and suck the marrow out of life." To me (then anyway) that meant skydiving, backpacking across Asia, picking up and moving to Dubai or Iceland, or Monaco and doing the expat thing for a few years.
Well, things didn't turn out that way. I met a beautiful woman and shortly thereafter got a job in Charlotte. I moved and she came down a month or so later. We ended up working for the same bank and stayed there for 3 years. Seems like a blur now.
We decided that the South, while not devoid of its charm, was not for us. It just never felt like home. I always had the feeling that I was visiting. No snow at Christmas and heat that would sap the fight out of a rabid pit-bull. When I was driving to work at 7:20 one morning in April and it was 92 degrees and my shirt was sticking to my back I knew it was time to go.
One brief job search later.....
I landed a job w/ my current employer, moved twice (first to MD and then to DE), my job was migrated from New York to Delaware, bought a house and had a kid. All within 18 months. 16 months after that, #2 son arrived. That brings us back to today (or thereabouts).
I saw my penchant for wild (and sometimes stupid and childish) risks disappear very shortly after my elest son was born. I knew that I had a tremendous responsibility to him and to my wife to make sure that I was there for them and that I could provide for them. I knew the void that father's can leave when they go. It's bad enough when it happens due to death by illness or accident, but the other reasons are even worse. There was no way I was going to risk inflicting such harm on my child for something stupid like skydiving.
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