Two years ago today my daughter was born. It almost feels cliche to write anything about the birth of a child. What is there to say that hasn’t already been said a thousand times?
But there is something remarkable that having a child does to your sense of time.
Two years have passed quickly. I can vividly remember those days in February two years ago, but these two years also feel much longer – or perhaps deeper – than the years before.
It is almost like your memory ends and then starts again. It’s not that you can’t remember moments from before, but it feels strange to remember a time when it was just me and my wife, without our daughter. Those memories feel more distant.
There is no experience more transformative than having a child. It’s a progressive feeling that everything has changed, over and over again. You don’t change in one day, you don’t become a different person right away, but having a child, and being a father, reorders your life.
That reordering is a gift of fatherhood. It begins a process that day by day and decision by decision changes who you are. It is frightening at times, this feeling of change. You feel that a part of yourself is now out in the world, exposed, and vulnerable.
But then as time passes it starts to feel odd to think of not living that way. It feels odd to imagine not being this invested in life and having this experience of love. It feels as if life is more real now than it was before.
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