Ira's Interdimensional Push On Becoming a Father #11

This is not a drill, I repeat, THIS IS NOT A DRILL!! My son Morris Shachar Seidman came at 3:25am local time in Zeist on November 20th which is objectively bat shit crazy. All the apprehension and uncertainty about my own meaning and passing on genes without rock solid answers came into full-scale collision with the hormones and vibes that come from holding your child in your arms for the first time. I took one good hard look at him and knew that we were definitely related, another good hard look or two had a sense of responsibility and again vibes all up on each other. Now with ten days of fatherhood under my belt, here's what I have to report: 1. Morris Shachar takes his plunge into life: Morris came out sunny-side up after about 24 hours of pretty irregular contractions. His big ass philosopher head was caught behind the cervix and I was waiting for the water to break for a good 24 hours after he came until Talja explained to me that the water broke when we popped the membrane in the pool... The last 15 minutes were a bit of a flash because he kind of just rolled out and started crying - loud as hell but there was something instinctive about it all that made me want to accommodate and provide some top quality customer-service for the guy. His needs were, and still are, pretty simple - eat, sleep, hold me, and blast out the dipe. I'll never forget how quickly he started looking for the breast, it could have been within seconds of us holding him. Since then there have been stand-offs where this little angel is crying unspeakably and he just about always gets what he wants after some experimentation despite having no words, highly limited motor ability, poor vision, and absolutely no capital. With all these physical needs meeting my own construct of fatherhood, I've started to view myself, just like at work, more as a facilitator than a father. It's not my job to beat the senselessness out of him or the reason into him but rather set up an arena for him to take his jumps in relative safety and peace, as much as possible. It's obviously early days but he seems to be doing everything he's supposed to be doing - eating, sleeping, holding us, and blasting out the dipe... Of course there will be a lifetime to report on all the ways this facilitation works, doesn't work, worked but actually didn't work, and beyond, but for now I just notice myself exponentially more sentimental during the Disney and Pixar movies where kids get separated from their parents. 2. Giving thanks for Thanksgiving: Like a fish out of water I needed to put the whole Thanksgiving tradition on my back this year because not Talja, nor Morris, nor Victor-Jolie knew the first thing about Thanksgiving. The whole thing got me thinking about customs, traditions, origin stories, and the quintessentially intangible. It's quite difficult to explain why Thanksgiving is such a big deal to someone who has never enjoyed the feast first-hand with a real rousing group of believers. If you haven't been there, the origin story gets funky fast and the food itself revolves around a bird that just about no one actually enjoys eating!! Even so, I marched on with what little time and actual T-Giving cooking experience I had to make something of a respectable spread with sprouts and carrots that got what was left of the Thai chili sauce, cranberry, stuffing, some leftover wedding pumpkin soup, and the works for dessert. The whole tradition, with a brief little Thanksgiving word or two at the top, largely revolved around the food which is fine by most people. To close with what the "specific learning differences" lady at my school said - "I get to create the traditions now." 3. Marching for community: As I put one tradition on my back I have been dancing with the difficulties of how I'm going to pass on some Jewish traditions while I'm at it. These aren't all so easily just whipped up in the kitchen (although there is a long list of bomb recipes) and with biggies like circumcision and the matrilineal nature of it all lying in limbo until some couple's therapy session or another of the future, I'm thinking about G-d and what all of this means anyway without something divine at the center. It's tough to ask Talja to follow me into the night about Judaism if I'm not rock solid about why I'm even making this such a centerpiece, but then again nobody seems rock-solid about much other than their Netflix and Seamless logins these days anyway so why should I have my act together more than everybody else? To cope or compensate or some combination of the both I've still been shopping around for a little something something in the way of community for myself but it's largely been belly up; the whole Jewish scene here all feels a little alien but all I really need is one - even just one person who sees Judaism similarly and we can get into the business of making a little Shabbat magic and festive love as the holidays ceaselessly roll around. For now I'll keep looking and prepare to built the damed thing myself if I really can't find it. [Photos](https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/188iOvM13jRwDqbStlIUbJS2aG2LsFxBb?usp=drive_link) of only Dolphy as you can imagine - the cranberry and stuffing didn't make it. Morris never did anything wrong - clean, pure, 100% honest, and totally reasonable. One day that will change, or maybe we are all clean and pure in as far as we act within what the laws of physics permit so it's all fair game. The endlessness of finding meaning continues to spin for me and if I never arrive at some promised land I can at least take some refuge in the idea that I can get Morris a step or two closer than where I started. Back to the monitony of eating, sleeping, holding, and blasting out the dipe with me, which I believe, like all of our activities, has the hidden gifts and answers of everything we are looking for if we just look the right way. GD, Ira