The Big Dumb Smile

Since my daughter was born 2½ years ago, countless imaginary people have asked me for advice on becoming a father.

Gather around, young fellas.

Now, if you think you would like to plant your seed inside a lady, you need to know what to expect.

Are you truly ready to sacrifice nearly all your sleep, free time, and peace of mind for another human being – someone who cries incessantly, feeds at inconvenient times, and depends on you for every basic need?

No doubt about it, getting your wife through pregnancy can be very hard. Fortunately, it only lasts nine months. Once the baby's born, the mother takes over and does everything, and your duties are reduced to feeling guilty and left out.

It's not that we fathers don't try, generally speaking. We're just fabulously incompetent.

For example, when my daughter was just a few weeks old, I started trying to feed her with a bottle. My wife had pumped about 117 gallons of breast milk, which did not look to me like a very pleasant way to spend an evening.

Anyway, the baby rejected both me and the bottle. I tried everything -- holding the bottle at various angles, squirting the milk at her mouth from across the room, and whatnot -- and I eventually gave up after two or three laborious attempts.

Now maybe plenty of fathers out there have managed to feed their babies. But I guarantee they've screwed up any number of other things:

“Did you remember to pack the baby toys?”

“Uh, you put her diaper on backwards.”

“What are you doing? Those clothes don't even match! Didn't you see the outfit I laid out?”

“UGH! The baby's clothes don't match either!”

Now, please don't misinterpret this as some big effort on my part to portray my wife as a nag. Nothing could be further from the truth; in reality, portraying my wife as a nag takes no effort whatsoever.

Ha ha! No, seriously: in addition to having a great sense of humor about herself, my wife has very high standards when it comes to parenting. If there is one area in which I would want someone to have high standards, it would be parenting.

And the truth is, she has been exceptionally patient with my inability to notice subtle things, such as when the baby is or is not, technically speaking, rancid, and therefore in need of a new diaper. As a result, I am three thousand times a more capable parent than if I were married to some pushover.

As a result of this self-confidence, I am able to relax and enjoy my healthy, well-nurtured super-genius of a child. At the moment she is pounding mercilessly on a toy piano and singing what seems to be the second verse of “Deck the Halls” over and over and over again.

You might think this would give me a headache, but in reality, it gives me a face-ache.

A guy who helped us put up new sheet rock in our house called it the “Big Dumb Smile.” I'll never forget how he described coming home from work and flopping down on the couch to watch his kids play, and then noticing a raw, burning pain in his cheeks that made him realize he had been smiling uncontrollably for about 15 minutes.

So there's a perfect euphemism for being a dad:

Wearing The Big Dumb Smile.

The Mother of All Holidays

Fatherhood brings many responsibilities, not the least of which is to remember, and properly observe, Mother’s Day. So get out your calendars, gentlemen, and make a note that Mother’s Day falls… uh… on a weekend. I think.

Okay, so I’m not that good with dates, unless they are the dates when the Yankees are scheduled to visit Fenway Park. But I’m trying to improve, because now that I’ve watched my wife become the superhuman force of nature that is Mommy, I take this holiday much more seriously.

We should celebrate Mother’s Day at least a couple of times a week. And we should celebrate it hardcore, like college students celebrate Cinco de Mayo.

Let’s build statues of pregnant women all over the place, at least one in every town.

Should these statues portray the stereotypical image of pregnancy, the fit and healthy Amazon lady who graces the cover of most motherhood magazines with a serene smile? Or should they be more realistic, the grim woman whose back, bladder, hormones, and hemorrhoids are in all-out violent revolt with a whole trimester left to go?

My wife survived months of severe nausea with grace and dignity (allowing the dogs to clean up your vomit can be “dignified” if you’ve already thrown up 20 times that day). In contrast, one day of stomach flu turns me into a whimpering baboon.

Completely exhausted and depleted, she went on to give birth and then endure several months with no sleep, as the baby required constant dancing in her baby carrier to sleep and didn’t want anything to do with her father until she turned six months old.

Something about this intense process transforms normal women into omniscient beings.

My mother once convinced me she had eyes in the back of her head, and I’ve yet to observe any hard evidence to contradict her claim.

Furthermore, mothers can provide scads of obscure information. My wife knew the exact right time (age eleven months and 24 days) to turn around the car safety seat so that it faces forward instead of backward.

Don't ask me how she knew, she just knew.

When I tried to turn it around a week early, because I happened to have a few spare moments (I like to use spare moments to find ways to lower my self-esteem), she gave me a tongue-lashing that would have shamed Genghis Kahn.

Another example: when I try to change my daughter's diaper, she squirms and twists and kicks around as if she was the offspring of a circus contortionist and an Olympic synchronized swimmer. But my wife can come in and calm her right down, accomplishing the diaper change in under 30 seconds.

Wow.

Plus, mothers have all the dirt on us. I don't care who you are, if you're reading this, you were at one time (hopefully not the present time) that squirming diaper change-ee. Barbara Bush could leak rare and humiliating information about our President if she wanted to; she’d just have to call up his nanny to find out about his childhood.

Knowing that my mother made huge sacrifices for me, remembers every minute detail of my childhood, and could embarrass me on a whim, I should probably at least give her a call and wish her a happy Mother’s Day.

But first I have to call her and find out when Mother’s Day is.