I'm Going to Be a Dad

First Steps, after Millet by Vincent van Gogh, 1890

On the Sunday I returned from meditating in the Arizona desert, my day had already been rather eventful. On the drive to the airport, somewhere between the retreat center and Tucson, I made a pitstop at urgent care to have my ear inspected—and flushed.

This is because, halfway through the retreat, *just* before bed one night, a mosquito flew straight down into my ear canal! Every time I moved my head, it would buzz like a manic beast, searching for its escape from the tiny tunnel it wasn’t supposed to enter. I could call it jarring, but to do so would be akin to describing the asteroid that obliterated the dinosaurs as a “minor pebble incident.” And yet, as massive as this incident felt at the time, it was superb training for managing unmanageable annoyances destined to invade the psyche.

The rest of my travel through SFO was, praise the gods, smooth. I felt, quite naturally, like I’d entered the flow of regular existence again. When I made it back to the 450-square-foot cottage Grace and I were living in at the time, I was thrilled to see her and immediately changed my clothes to get ready to go out to dinner. But then, just as we were gearing up to leave, I noticed a small gift bag on the kitchen table with my name on it.

“Baby, you didn’t need to—I was the one who took a trip,” I said.

She smiled.

“Should I open it now?”

“Uh-huh,” she replied, nodding.

I removed the gift-wrapping paper and felt my way into the bag. Inside was a small, soft, light green shirt. It seemed far too small for me, but it was certainly soft enough. My girl knows me well, I thought, smiling. I only wear the softest shit.

As I held the garment in my hands, with the fluffy cotton fabric pinched between my fingers at the corners, I realized this so-called “shirt” was not just small but comically undersized—a fact made abundantly clear when I realized it was, in fact, a baby onesie, designed for a human roughly the size of a teacup chihuahua.

“Wait….” I said, looking at Grace. “Is this??????”

Tears were already streaming down her face.

“Really?”

She nodded her head yes, sobbing now.

“Oh, my fucking god!!!” I said, picking her up in what surely was the most explosive bear hug I have ever given.

A primal energy coursed through my veins: an intensity that quickly threatened to overwhelm my system, like standing at the tip of a mountaintop, teetering between the triumph of conquest and the utterly human fear of falling into the abyss.

Rewinding a bit… During the pandemic, there was an incident when, while attempting to repair a malfunctioning electrical panel, I inadvertently electrocuted myself. Like, not just a little shock, but the full-on most intense jolt I’ve ever experienced, and I’ve had my fair share of jolts, one way or another. But what I mean is holding the onesie for the first time, understanding its meaning, implications, and prophecies sent an electrical current—not just through my system—but through the core of who I am.

I don’t remember what I said to Grace after that moment, but I distinctly remember the energy shift. That jolt exposed a raw vulnerability within me, signaling the start of a new phase in our lives. Grace and I were closer—suddenly—in a way that couldn’t be pinned down in words. I couldn’t fathom how we arrived here, and yet, I could.

In the years we’ve been together, we had never used a goalie, any sort of birth control, because Grace preferred to avoid hormone manipulation. But we had literally just started the “trying but not trying” approach, no longer tracking her cycle and instead, if we could be so lucky, opening up a prayer to create a new family on God’s time. We expected it to take months, or even a year, so this news came as a shock. Despite the inevitable surprise, it was happening far sooner than our friends led us to believe (thanks, Chan & Triz). No news has ever changed my life so completely in a single moment.  

It was all such a blur, and even now, looking back, I don’t remember much of the play-by-play after I understood why I was holding a comically undersized shirt. The only details that remain vivid are the energy and when Grace said: “Babe, you took your shirt off!” I saw that I had, in fact, de-robed, undoing the buttons of my (buttery soft) Hawaiian shirt without realizing it. In an unconscious moment of revelation, I had laid bare the frenzy within.

The next couple of weeks were some of the best of my life. I was still surfing the now-peaceful wave cultivated through years of meditation practice, allowing things to unfold naturally rather than powering through them with brute force in an attempt to perfect the outcome. Grace and I had a new secret to protect and nurture, something we had always wanted together, and now that moment was here. We decided to tell our families early, mostly because we had a trip to NYC to visit my family and in-person makes for a far better baby reveal than Zoom.

We didn’t know how quickly things would change. In the first trimester, Grace got sick. Not nausea but pure exhaustion, depression—frankly, misery. I couldn’t imagine what she was going through in her body. I had never seen her so out of commission, nor had I ever felt so powerless to help. It was confusing to be so excited on the one hand, but then on the other, it all seemed so painful, so unknown.

It was hard to know what “normal” was, especially when books and movies made the process look charmed. I found myself wondering whether something was wrong, whether there was something in our gene pool we weren’t aware of, but it turned out that pregnancy really is just *gnarly* for most women. Whatever you saw on the screen was the opposite of what it felt like to have her body change hour by hour in preparation for the future life taking shape within Grace’s belly. For her to be growing a whole new organ—the placenta—usurped every bit of energy she had, making even the simplest daily tasks feel like monumental challenges.

Then, in the last weeks of the first trimester, Hamas attacked Israel, and the war began. With all the bullshit online, I decided to throw my hat in the ring, which I don’t regret; but for a time, it didn’t exactly increase my capacity to be present with Grace in the way she needed me to.

Looking back now, I can see how this phase of life carried the weight of life’s mystery—birth, death, and the ever-turning wheel of karma. It was a humbling time to let go of what I thought I knew to be true or real about myself and lean into all I didn’t know with openness and curiosity. I had to reconcile with my fears, doubts, and insecurities at a whole new level. For instance, before we found out we were pregnant, I had my neurotic concerns that I shot blanks—given the, you know, natural course of sex one has over a life without any resulting pregnancies. I couldn’t control whether I was fertile or not, plus you hear about those decreasing sperm rates in our toxic health climate…

Grace and I started “trying without trying” by holding hands and saying a few ritualized words about our hopes and intentions for the family we were now ready to bring into the world. We were willing to see what would happen and go from there. But conception itself was not entirely within our sphere of influence, right? And even now, as we eagerly anticipate this new life, the essence of who this baby will be—what they’ll enjoy or dislike, whether they’ll have my restless wild energy or Grace’s soothing calm—all that remains a beautiful enigma, awaiting its unveiling. We don’t even know the baby’s sex, opting to leave it a surprise.

Luckily, when Grace began the second and third trimesters, the tides shifted favorably, and I’ve never seen her more radiant. She is full of joyful anticipation, her voice light and singsong. Although the last several months have brought their share of stress—especially in navigating a move from our tiny cottage to a larger home to make space for our little one—we are filled with an intangible happiness that makes everyday worries seem frivolous. On a deeper level, I think it’s safe to say neither of us has ever been more content.

Even though I was previously married, I went through a period of time when it was nearly impossible to imagine having the right conditions to start a real family. Somewhere in the multiverse, there’s an alternate reality where I never became such a hardcore addict and had a child with my ex with my eyes closed. In another, I became an addict and stayed an addict, buried so deep that there was no room for a family, no room for anything else but the pursuit of escape.  

And yet, for as long as I can remember, I’ve always wanted to be a dad. For one, my jokes are already pretty lame (I promise this hadn’t always been the case—but also, I guess it’s a thing with men where jokes worsen with age, eh?). But besides that, I guess what I’m trying to say is that it is fundamentally harder for me to imagine not being a dad than it is to imagine becoming the one I will be someday soon. I’m certain that having two loving parents—still married, forty years later—has helped contribute to this intuitive certainty. 

I also know that none of this would be possible without the gift of recovery, nor the fact that countless people helped me turn my life around after I hit rock bottom, people who taught me how to reclaim agency over my life, how to be, and how to love.

Grace is first on the list this way, and I cannot imagine having a better partner to be navigating this new terrain with. I know, deep in my marrow, that she will be a phenomenal mother. Not just because her mom always tells me, “Your girl was born to breed, Al,” but because she is a healer in every sense of the word. She is present and caring and knows how to slow down to make space for building a life. The moment you meet her, you’ll know what I am getting at—some people just have a disarming presence, they bring the vibes that you didn’t know you were missing, and that’s Grace, who could not be more aptly named. Throughout our years together, she has patiently helped me recognize my blind spots and shed the hardened layers formed around my core. To fully immerse oneself in a romantic relationship, it seems, is to stand exposed, stripped bare in body and soul.

And so, for as much fear-mongering is out there for new parents, I know we have our foundation to turn back on. We share a desire to be ourselves, to let parenting be an unknown process we take as we go, rather than one we are trying to order or control into a perfect arc. Because no perfect arc exists—there is just too much unknown, for all of us, in this life.

For as much as people might complain about the stress, the lack of sleep, the cost of school, or the threat of the anxious AI generation, I know that, most of all, it is about being open to change. Just as I once couldn’t fathom recovery or what it could mean to open myself up to altered states of consciousness, as a parent-to-be, I know I’ll never be able to fully prepare for this initiation until it’s happening. It’s another test for killing the ego, for letting go, even when it’s terrifying to feel old versions of your selfhood slipping away. It’s about acknowledging there’s no ground left to stand on, that you are naked at the mountaintop, and that no one is coming to save you but you and your partner—through the future you are building, day by day, together.

Looking back on that moment when I first held the baby onesie, I smile at the way my mind initially struggled to comprehend its significance. It reminds me that life’s biggest transformations often begin with a moment of confusion and vulnerability, a stripping away of the layers we use to protect ourselves from the unknown.

But when the realization finally came, it brought a sense of clarity, revealing an unguarded piece of my heart that had been waiting to be acknowledged. As Grace and I eagerly await the arrival of our little one on May 22, I remain in awe of the precision engineering of the universe. For as sacred as life is—with or without kids—I cannot imagine a more sacred experience than creating a new human with the person you love. Through this dude’s crash course in female anatomy, I find myself more in tune with the natural flow of existence, and I can’t help but deepen my reverence for the wonder of it all. I see spirit as the ultimate architect, weaving its plans within plans beyond my limited understanding, and at the same time, molding me into the father I’m fated to be.