Hostage Taker

"The father of a daughter is nothing but a high-class hostage. A father turns a stony face to his sons, berates them, shakes his antlers, paws the ground, snorts, runs them off into the underbrush, but when his daughter puts her arm over his shoulder and says, "Daddy, I need to ask you something," he is a pat of butter in a hot frying pan."
~ Garrison Keillor

I promise I am not going to turn this into a baby blog.  Everybody thinks their child or grandchild is special.  And they're right.  


But I have been distracted lately by the spectacle of new parents slowly realizing in their bones that everything has changed forever.  I guess there is no way to teach this.  It's not just an idea.  You have to learn it the hard way to learn it right, and some people never do.  They can't have a schedule of their own any more.  They are going to have to pack that away for 20 or 30 years.  They can't come and go as they please, or be themselves alone.  It's only been a week, but something tiny has taken over the world.  And she means business.


Forget the birth.  Incredible as that is, evolution has conspired to make most of it automatic.  The really amazing thing comes in the weeks after that, as a couple plus one struggle to understand how to become something more, something that wasn't there before.  Something that matters more than they do.


They are learning how to be a family.