In short, I think I had gotten very good at avoiding certain of life's normal vicissitudes, which having a child forced me to face again. Indeed, when I reflect upon the things that I have found myself feeling lately, they strike me - a 37-year old man - as rather appalling:
- A frequent inability to empathize with my daughter's sadness and frustration - it has often been very hard for me to remind myself that she doesn't have the means to control her emotions, and I am often apathetic or unsympathetic to her feelings.
- Impatience at her failure to understand what I am asking (or telling) her to do.
- Anger when she is angry - especially if she hits me or pushes me away. My most common reactions are either to feel sorry for myself, for her 'not liking me', pout that she has done something unfair or unwarranted, or wish to punish her punitively, without knowing if she would understand what was happening. Again, this on the part of a 37-year old, about a 15-month old.
- Anger when she intentionally defies what I ask (or tell) her to do. If that seems - for perhaps a fraction of a second and without further analysis - like something that is reasonable, please ask yourself - is there any real possibility that a one and a half year old could be exercising some innate free will when she decides to defy me? Or is it more likely that I have inadvertently taught her to defy me by my own actions and unnoticed patterns of reward and punishment? I'm not sure at what age you can stop blaming yourself for your child's undesirable behaviors, but I'm pretty sure it's not at one and a half years old.
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Becoming a parent has made me feel a lot of things, and I'm grateful - as a human being with one life to live - to have felt all of them. But many of them felt bad (and some awful), and can only be seen as beneficial when viewed through a practical lens by their capacity to prompt reflection and change in myself.
One of the predominant things I felt - especially in the first six months - was a sense of being imprisoned by having had a child. I no longer had much free time - and almost never when I wanted it - nor did I have the freedom to come and go as I wished, nor to travel places often, except by Merry's kindness (which I can't help but continue to see as a debt that I accrue). That feeling of imprisonment has dissipated - not for the circumstances changing, at least not very much - so much as having simply gotten used to it, the way people are apt to do with virtually any circumstances they end up in.
Now I feel something else - something that I wouldn't have predicted (though maybe I just lack the imagination). Having come to realize just how much influence I will have on her life, I feel a prisoner to Signe's own future. I've come to believe that any shirking of my responsibilities as a parent, or any failure to be a good role model, will reduce Signe's long term happiness and well-being - an equation that only Merry and I can affect so substantially. There is "nowhere to run" - anything less than the best is less than she could've been given.
I have, on multiple isolated occasions, gotten very mad at Signe, and failed to treat her with the compassion and patience that she deserves. The most recent time, having already reproached myself and reflecting on the incident, I had a vision of her choosing a partner later in life that, likewise, would treat her poorly. I don't know if there is truth to the adage that children grow up to choose romantic partners based in part on what their parent of the opposite sex is or was like - but I'm inclined to believe there is something to this. (For my thought exercise, I'll assume there is.) What if this person abuses her, by words or even physically? (To be clear, I have never done this to Signe, but I fear that it is only different by degree if she comes to believe that unjustified anger is an acceptable form of expression.) The thing is, I can see a path from here to there - I can imagine by my own poor actions that she learns - without her ever realizing she has learnt it, much less from me - that she should accept, and perhaps even love, someone who would express such unjustified anger towards her. There are few things I've felt in the last year and a half that are so disheartening, that motivate me to fix myself quite so urgently.
What I'm now imprisoned by, is the thought that my own actions have the power to profoundly affect not only myself, but someone else, in a way that will determine the quality of their entire future. How would I feel at the end of my life if I knew I did any less than all I could to give Signe a good life? I can't think of many greater regrets.
