Cutesy

I am not a baby person, and by that I mean I don't immediately melt into a pile of baby-talking mush at the sight of any and every baby. Don't get me wrong, I have no problem with babies, I thin they're as cute as a button, or something comparably small and adorable. I recognize and accept the things that people are traditionally annoyed with (crying, etc.) as part of what babies are and I do not fault them for that. It's just that I do not have strong and immediate feelings for babies that I do not know. I used to wonder if this made me a cold person somehow. I warm up to puppies without hesitation but I cannot muster a mere "coochie-coo" for someone else's baby.

In addition to this, in the past few months I have been noticing more and more couples with their babies and, to my surprise, I have been unable imagine myself in their position. It makes me pause every time, dumbfounded and a bit scared. Does this mean that I am unprepared for fatherhood and all its responsibilities? How can I not picture myself as that guy with his daughter? That's going to be me in a matter of weeks.

But now I think I know why. It's because that's not going to be me. I'm not going to be that overweight, pasty, thirty-something-year-old, mustached guy in the park with the young child. I'm going to be the skinny, pasty, twenty-something-year-old, possibly bearded guy with his daughter in the park; that is, I'm still going to be me even though so many other things may change. And our baby will not be the strange one of people we barely know, it will be our own flesh and blood, with some strange combination of our quirks and odd body parts. And my wife will certainly not be the mean woman that sat in front of us at mass, it will still be the Dinka that I know and love.

So call me cold-hearted and unfeeling if you will, I don't want to hold your baby or coo over it. I don't think it is an indicator of much at all. Besides, my wife and I are making our own set of new friends anyway.