Now after little over three months of being a father, I would think that what I missed the most from my pre-parenthood days would be alone-time and sleep. But actually what I miss the most are (in no particular order):
- Writing
- Reading
- Jazz
In a sense, I have learned to compensate for each. For example, instead of writing in Grave Error, I have followed the Twitter trend (btw, follow me) . Just as “video killed the radio star”, Twitter has killed blogging (which previously killed journalism). Now I tweet what I used to blog, just in a dozen words.
While I no longer have any justifiable excuse to lay in bed and read a book (or the news for that matter) instead of sharing the parental responsibilities of an infant, I have learned to do all of my reading almost entirely on my metro commute to and from work, at the expense of listening to podcasts. Surprisingly for only a 30 minute commute, in just three months, I have already finished Jonathan Frazen’s Freedom, Ryu Murakami’s 69, Colm Toibin’s Brooklyn, and believe it or not, Tolstoy’s War and Peace! And I am about to finish Rafael Yglesia’s A Happy Marriage. Not bad. Meanwhile, my consumption of other written media has been relegated to merely previewing what others post on Twitter.
Finally, with regards to Jazz, unfortunately, my baby’s ears are simply not ready yet for the angular sounds of Coltrane, Monk and Dolphy. Nonetheless, with his confusing daily exposure to Arabic, English, French and Spanish along with his multiple nationalities, I am forcefeeding my boy healthy doses of that other great and uniquely American, American music genre: Motown and old school R&B. He gets lots of Diana Ross and the Supremes, Smokey Robinson, Stevie Wonder, Curtis Mayfield, and others. His favorite songs, I have decided, are “People Get Ready”, “Me and Mrs. Jones”, and “Where Did Our Love Go”. Almost every Motown song that exists seems to have the word “baby” in the lyrics, making singing them to him appropriate at almost any time.
But regardless of those three sacrifices, I more than delighted with the lack of mobility that parenthood has forced on mommy and daddy — meaning no more weekend commutes to and from Paris. And, of course, there is my favorite substitute past time — when not changing diapers and soothing a crying baby — seen in the photo above (though now at three months he barely fits anymore).
Grave Error 