Lenten Reflection 4: On Pain and Fatherhood

This is my son...



I snapped this picture with my phone during the Presanctified liturgy on Wednesday night. I take him to church in his pajamas so that it is easier to lay him down when we get home. His bedtime is usually around 7:00. The Liturgy of the Presanctified Gifts starts at 6:30 and usually goes to about 7:30 or 7:45. Then there is a meal afterward.

My son is a fat baby. I mean that in an affectionate way. I often tickle him by grabbing a handful – a handful! – of fat from his chubby stomach and saying (in my baby voice), "Where's the belly fat?" I'm not sure why this is funny, but George thinks it's hilarious!

I am especially aware of how heavy he is during church. He does not really cling to me when I hold him, and the tireder he gets, the heavier. All the weight tends to collect somewhere toward his compact center of gravity. It reminds me of when I worked at UPS in college. I would literally move thousands of packages a night. The large 100 pound packages weren't that bad. The hardest packages to lift were the small, dense ones, the 30-pounders no bigger than your head. Though he's not quite that heavy, George is small and dense.

So I hold my little 30-pounder during the first half of the service. As he gets tired he begins to squirm and push away from me. So I put him down. But he doesn't want down. He begins to cry. So I pick him up and struggle with him some more, a package that doesn't want to sit or be held but to float in midair.

I have a "baby dance" I use. It works every time. I wonder if I can patent it? There are two variations, depending on how much the baby is fighting sleep. One is a hip-knee swivel. I begin circling my knees, then my hips independently of my knees. I imagine that I look something like a twister gyrating its through Kansas. Not wanting to draw much attention to myself in church, I opt for the more subdued, back-and-forth baby dance. Shifting my weight from left to right in a rocking motion, George begins to drift off to sleep. After a couple of minutes of this I put him down on my jacket, but he wakes up, so I pick him up again.

I continue the dance. Meanwhile my back begins to ache. It's never been right since UPS. My right elbow, once dislocated and fractured, begins to throb. My left shoulder, a new injury, starts to crack and pop as I roll the arm supporting my son's trunk around in its socket in a failed attempt to loosen things up a bit.

I also have to mind my daughter, who last Wednesday was behaving well. She doesn't always. So sometimes I add to my dance a constant up-down motion as I bend over to listen to the questions she's asking me. More often they are arguments she's making, arguments about TV and candy that I know can wait, but are urgent for her.

Then there is the bowing. There's lots of bowing during the Presanctified liturgy. So I stop my rocking, with George in my arms, and do my best to make a prostration (I remind Kyla to do the same). My back pops on the way down...then up again. I probably don't have to bow. After all, I'm holding my son and minding my daughter. Nobody would blame me for not bowing when everyone else does. It would be perfectly understandable if I just sat in my chair with my head low. But I bow...I crack and bow. In a way, I find comfort in the pain.

There are a lot of things I don't do well as a parent. I am impatient and often quick-tempered. I am unsympathetic. I don't have the same perspective on things as Stephanie. I cannot begin to understand what it must be like to carry a child in your body, to literally have that child suck the life out of you. Not many people seem to know this, but when a woman gets pregnant, all the good stuff goes to the baby, then the mother. She gets what's left. Prenatal vitamins help the child, but they also help the mother too. If the Mother does not properly nourish the child, it will take what it needs...without asking! Stephanie suffered during both pregnancies. She was anxious, uncomfortable, often in serious pain. Nerves were pinched. Bones were moved. Her body was forever transformed by what she carried inside her. Yet in spite of this transformation exerted by our two children, she would do it all again. Meanwhile, my back aches.

I'm stronger than Stephanie. No surprise there, right? God gave me bigger muscles and her bigger brains! When she is with me at service (and she's not always with me), I spend quite a bit of time holding the kids. When she's not there I still spend quite a bit of time holding the kids. It is something I can do. I cannot give them by body. I cannot feed them from myself. I can't even comfort them the same way Stephanie can. I'm not good at it. But I can pick them up. I can hold them for long periods of time, usually as long as they want to be held. After I get George to sleep, my patient daughter wants her turn. So I pick her up too. She's heavier than George, but usually easier to hold, more like the big box.

In Orthodoxy, I'm not aware of any stories of stigmata. Taking upon ourselves the sufferings of Christ is not part of our consciousness in the same way it is for the Catholics. While we have stories of monks sleeping on rocks and wearing heavy chains, the point of all this isn't really to punish themselves or to imitate Christ. It's about discipline. But when my elbow throbs and my back aches, I end up thinking about the sufferings of Christ. Holding my kids becomes a kind of self-immolation. I don't want to minimize the cross. My hands are not pierced. I am not abused or mocked. But I do hurt out of love for my little ones.

I am deeply aware of my shortcomings as a father. I love my children, but there are so many things I cannot really do for them. I cook meals. I often lay them down or get them up in the morning. But I don't do it with the same ease and patience as Stephanie. But holding them is something I can do, and when I do it, they know I love them. When church is over and my bones begin to crack and pop, I take comfort in the discomfort. My children may never know how they aggravate old injuries. But for me the extremely minor pains of their father becomes a reminder of the sufferings of another who loved me and let his body be broken for their sakes and mine.