I don’t know that I’ve ever had a moment in my life that made me question reality. There have been things that have happened to me, however, that seemed so bizarre, so unreal, that they had me saying something along the lines of, “I can’t believe this is happening, and yet here we are.”
9/11 comes to mind. I wasn’t directly affected by it, either in New York or in Boston, but like most of the country, I watched things unfold live on TV that day. I bring up 9/11 only because, as an American, it’s probably the closest thing we have to experiencing anything resembling a war happening on our soil. For people in war-torn countries like Ukraine, or Iraq previously, going from living a regular life one day to realizing you’re living in the middle of a battle zone has got to be a real mind job. I think those kinds of situations would have anyone questioning reality.
At the same time, there are beautiful, happy milestones that can make you question reality just as deeply—like the moment you become a parent. Even now, it completely boggles my mind that I was involved in the creation of another human being.
My parents had flown down to South Carolina in time for Kid 1’s birth. Since he was being delivered via C-section, it was a little easier to coordinate. Shortly after we came out of the room with him, he was swaddled up and they were taking him to get cleaned up. As I was walking along the cart they were pushing, I saw The Old Man and said, “Hey Dad! Look what we found in here!” The Old Man had a weird sense of humor, and I felt like I was always trying to keep up with him.
I remember driving back and forth from the hospital for the next few days feeling like a god. I didn’t have a care in the world. There was almost nothing that could’ve knocked me off my perch at that moment.
To be honest, though, I don’t think the reality of “being someone else’s dad” really hit me until the day we were leaving the hospital.
I know it’s an old cliché when they say kids don’t come with instruction books. But the truth is, they don’t. It’s a bizarre feeling when your significant other is getting discharged and you walk out of the hospital with one more human being than you had when you walked in. I can only imagine the mind job it must be when someone gives birth to twins or triplets.
But think about that. You leave with one more person. Something that was just a bump in your partner’s stomach is suddenly a living, breathing human being—albeit a very small one.
And of course, shortly after Kid 1 was born, I couldn’t help but think about Mother and The Old Man. I had just experienced the throes of childbirth myself. I had just become a parent. But in that moment, I started thinking, Man, what must this be like for them? Out of me and my two siblings, I was the first to have a child. I was the one who made Mother and The Old Man grandparents.
Try to imagine one of your children giving birth to a child of their own. I often quote the Marlon Brando line from Superman, where Jor-El says, “The son becomes the father, and the father becomes the son.” I don’t know if there’s any experience in this life that captures that more than having a child, or watching your own child have a child, and thereby perpetuating the cycle.
Kid 1 is 19 now. God willing, he’s nowhere near having a child of his own yet. But I do know people I graduated high school with who are already grandparents themselves. That’s a thought that hasn’t escaped me.
Talk about a shift in reality.
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The article “A Shift in Reality: All of This Has Happened Before” first appeared on Rebuilding Rob
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