On My Daughter, Sincerity, and Rehabbing from Years of Cringe Humor

Some Christmases ago, my mom gave me a book that made me feel weird.

Upon receiving it, my sarcastic, cooler-than-school twenty-something year old self responded in conformity with the social training I’d received from witty friends and cynical pop culture all my life:

I immediately poked fun at it.

“Lol, Mom this book is… uh…this is pretty special. Gotta say.” By special, I of course meant cringy. Emotionally icky. Squirmy.

Let me make my case.

The book was a children’s story called Love You Forever. Maybe you've read it, and maybe you're one of the many people who find it a heartwarming, tear-jerking story. Unfortunately for my mom in this moment, however, the book's mass approval would prove to be of little help as she was attempting to hand this particular copy of Love You Forever to, (as I've mentioned) the very sarcastic, cooler-than-school twenty-something-year-old version of me.

Meaning, there was really no hope for this moment blossoming into... well, the heartfelt one she'd envisioned.

For starters, even the book's title felt squirmy. A feeling worsened particularly by the fact that my mom was handing me this book wearing one of those mom looks: you know, the overt and uncomfortably deep, intimate kind. The kind where her very very very sincere, tear-misted eyes were clearly longing to lock into mine and pass sweet, wordless nothings to me across the short physical distance between us, which itself was already in near violation of modern social proxemics. Judge me if you must, but my crawling skin and I were looking for a way to slither out of this moment before even opening the book.

And if the title felt squirmy, the book’s plot felt doubly so.

Basically, in Love You Forever there’s this mom who loves to hold her baby son. And while he’s a baby, the mom develops this tradition(?) where she sneaks into his bedroom at night while he’s sleeping, lifts him from his bed, and cradles him in her arms. Which is fine, since her son… is a baby and all. But as tends to happen to babies, her son grows up, becomes an adult, and moves out. And this mom, well: she has a hard time letting go of that cherished season of life when she could cradle her baby boy in her arms.

So, one enchanted night the mom goes to her grownup son’s house, hoists a ladder up to his bedroom window (yes really - she brought an actual ladder), climbs it and sneaks through the window, and then, you guessed it (or maybe you didn’t, because it’s kind of weird): snuggles up in bed with her grownup, not-so-baby son — who thankfully at the time of this break-in appears to be a single person — just so she could hold him in her arms… one… more… time. And, well there’s more to the story after this but I didn’t make it beyond that part. The scene closes curtain depicting the mom cradling her now very large adult human being of a son in his bed while he sleeps, apparently feeling quite fulfilled whilst she relives the thrill of his babyhood. Her wish, *sniffle sniffle*, had come true.

See? Squirmy. Something about my mom climbing a ladder to sneak into my bedroom at night to cuddle me as a grownup just, I don’t know, doesn’t feel entirely cozy. Again, judge me if you must.

Anyway, it was clear that by giving me this book my mom was less-than-subtly saying she missed the days when she could hold me in her arms. Was she also now suggesting we go snuggle so she could relive the thrill of my babyhood one… more… time…?

Unsure, but I wasn’t gonna let it get that far anyway.

One final detail and detour before I arrive at how this connects with my daughter’s one-month old celebration: When my mom handed me this… special book… it should be noted that I was in our living room with all my siblings around.

Translation? I had an audience.

And since with an audience it’s scientifically proven that all Millennials spontaneously transform into Jim Halpert from The Office (or maybe it’s just me), I automatically, instinctively, skillfully tapped into the years of social conditioning afforded me by all my cringe-humor TV shows and, with mercenary ease, downgraded the emotional intensity of the moment she wanted to share with me into something I was more comfortable with by…erm, lightly scoffing.

And well, what else could I do? To scoff is to be Millennial. Weaponized humor is chief among my generation’s core values. Par for our course. And can you blame us? We did, after all, come of age in the nothing-is-ever-serious decade of the ‘00s. A decade, I suggest, that left many of us with an emotional handicap one might call “committed coolness.” A handicap of the heart which regrettably seems to, more often than not, render moments of genuine emotional sincerity strange and unwelcome. Anathema, even. So, when the honest moment my mom was attempting to share with me through the giving of this book came without warning… here in our living room… in the audience of all my siblings… among whom I had a witty reputation to uphold… I did what committed cool people do. I bent away from her attempted sincerity like it were a potential shirt stain or, you know, communicable disease. How? By injecting a couple gigs of insincerity into it.

By scoffing.

Hence the verbal response I gave my mom: “Lol, wow Mom. This book is uh… this is special. Gotta say.” Don’t worry: I scored the laughs from my siblings I was hoping to. And if I’ve ever read that book again since, it was surely to score more laughs by poking more fun at its squirmy-ness.

But what about now? Now that as of one month ago I have a daughter of my own?

Well, I think.

I think age changes things. (Profound, I know)

I think, at this age, my par-for-the-course emotional handicap of committed coolness is being deconstructed nail by nail, board by board, each time and every minute I hold my own baby daughter in my arms. No, I’m not sure I personally want to copy the plotline of Love You Forever. I doubt that when my baby girl grows up and moves out I’m going to take a ladder over to her house and use it to break in through her bedroom window one wintry night and expect she’s gonna want to snuggle with her old dad after that. Erica probably wouldn’t let me anyways.

But… I get why that squirmy story touched my mom’s heart now.

Or at least, as age slowly rehabilitates an old handicap and places the younger, cooler, more sarcastic me farther in the rear view, I’m starting to get it.

I’m beginning to see and feel for myself how a parent can mourn their baby growing up, even as they celebrate it. How, behind the smiles and applause and cheers with which they shower their children through all life’s milestones, they may secretly (or not-so-secretly) harbor the aching wish that they could have back for just one more night those sacred, far gone seasons of life when their little one fit snugly inside their embrace. When those new eyes could see only the single kind face beaming at them, exhausted and exhilarated, from 8-12 inches away. When those little, uncoordinated arms and legs weren’t yet capable of such painful things as growing up and moving out of the house.

 “Time, you thief, you restless evil: don’t you take my baby away from me too fast” is the more visceral part of the message embedded in that squirmy book my mom gave me those Christmases ago. And once, when I was cool, that sincere message ricocheted off my soul like a bullet off steel. But now?

Now that message has begun to shatter me, to bruise me, to penetrate me (hush, Michael Scott). Now, it's begun inflicting upon me a wound from which I’m not sure human hearts are meant to recover.

The wound of impermanence: of longing for good things to last forever while knowing they won’t.

And were I writing this as a thinking Christian, I would here tip my hat to the clever way a kind and sensitive God uses such wounds to aim our hearts toward the far grander application of Time he has in queue for the world. Eternity, where time both is and is no more. Ever, and lasting.

But for now I’m just writing as a new dad. So, for now, I’ll simply mourn and celebrate the temporal fact that today Avonlea is my baby, and loving her forever begins here, on the far front end of a much longer journey to come. And though she currently cries more for her mommy than she does her daddy (am I jealous? of course I am), I do in these brief and slow hours get to hold her tiny frame snugly in my arms. I get to snuggle that soft little head, which can barely balance itself; I get to squeeze those quaking little arms which can’t hardly coordinate yet; admire those little blue eyes, which can’t see a foot beyond their surface; count up and down those little ten toes, which know nothing of walking or running or jumping or leaving; and kiss that tiny nose with my big old dad nose. 

And for that I say, thank you. Thank you, oh great God and Father of all, for this great love. Thank you even for the bittersweet context of impermanence that makes this great love wound a parent like it does.

May you carry on rehabilitating me with it.

Thaw this once-cool soul; make me much warmer.

“…He will turn the hearts of the fathers to their children…”

-Mal. 4:6