Happy Happy Happy

Today, 31 years after the Friday the 13th on which is was born, we are celebrating Nate’s birthday. A year ago we celebrated with bags under our eyes and a sweet little one-month-old baby in our arms, and truth be told I hardly remember what we did to mark the occasion. He sure as hell didn’t get lucky, and if we managed to stay up past 9, it was only because we were up again every two hours the rest of the night to tend to the bundle of screams we were starting to wonder why we had brought home with us. Don't we look shell-shocked:



What a difference a year makes.

There are a few things I’ve learned about parenting with someone in the last year. One is an affirmation of something my sister said: you never love or hate anyone quite as much as the person you have a kid with. Amen. There are no words for what I feel when I see the tenderness and love and goofiness with which Nate approaches every interaction with Clementine. He is a wonderful dad, and my heart melts (I swear, I have never grasped at my chest so many times in my whole live as I have in the last 13 months) about a hundred times a day as he chases her around the house, sings her to bed with his goofy lyrics to Beastie Boys songs or comforts her in the middle of the night with the patience of a saint. Sure, there is the flip side, usually at 2 a.m. when I can hardly function and he offers me some advice on how to handle her (I don’t take suggestions well) or doesn’t react fast enough when Clementine spits up in bed or pees on the floor. I hardly dwell on these, so let’s move on. The second thing I’ve learned is that kids can bring out the very best in people, and in Nate’s case I’ve seen not only his very best but some parts of him I would never have guessed could exist. He often surprises me with just how well he understands his daughter, just how connected to her and committed to her he is. It’s not that I thought he’d be a cold-hearted schlock, but when I look around at other dads I know Nate is a cut above. Every step of the way he is teaching me about parenthood and fatherhood, what true involvement is, and I’m almost always in awe.

But celebrating Nate is about more than just his finer attributes as a parent. He is a wonderful partner, one who puts up with my crazies and neuroses, one who supports me (even when no one else does), one who sometimes lives on the scraps of love and attention I have left at the end of the day and doesn’t bitch. This is starting to sound like a yearbook inscription, and I don’t want to reduce how amazing he is to a few lines of superlatives. Instead I have been looking for a quote of Karl Marx’s I once read about how he and his wife had been together for so long he knew every mark on her face and where it came from, but of course I can’t find it and can’t quite seem to get the sentiment right. I know where every mark on Nate’s face has come from (hell, I put some of them there). We have grown up together, we have seen the world together, bought a house, made a life and a baby together, and we somehow are still as in love as we were in college—more so. Sure, it’s not crazy in-bed-all-day love, my-heart-beats-fast-every-time-I-think-of-you love (thought it does beat fast when I see him). It’s better. It’s you-are-the-one-for-me love, I-love-you-even-though-I’ve-seen-you-at-your-worst love, I’ll-love-you-when-you’re-old-wrinkled-and-incontinent love. Even those words don’t cut it.

So today I celebrate Nate and his birthday. Nate, my bizarre and wonderful husband who has a Mercedes that runs of vegetable oil, a ’65 Impala he built as a teenager, a hundred odd bicycles and a million unfinished projects in the garage. Nate, who is good at math and yet reads Yeats and will talk to you all day about how amazing Victorian novels are (especially Thomas Hardy) before going downstairs to play with his remote control cars. Nate, who will let his daughter and his nieces dress him up in anything frilly, and will play doll house and tea party all day long if we let him. Nate, who is shy and likes to stay home but who transforms himself into this incredible extrovert every Halloween when we dress him up and take him out to terrorize or entertain the masses. Nate, who is the only one in our house cleans the floor and the dishes and tries to keep my clutter at bay. Nate, who takes things apart and can’t always put them back together, who will embark on any fool’s errand if we ask him to, who loves to travel, who will try anything, who eats hot peppers raw….Nate. Happy Birthday, enough said.