Читать книгу My Baby, Your Son - Anne Peters - Страница 7

Dear Reader,

I wasn’t even twenty-one the first time I held Tyler. It had only been seven months since April told me she was pregnant, seven months since I panicked and she’d left, seven months to get used to the idea of fatherhood. But I hadn’t thought about it because though I knew I had fathered a child, I could pretend it hadn’t really happened because April was gone. I didn’t see the baby grow inside of her, didn’t feel his first kick, didn’t bond with him the way other expectant fathers get a chance to do.

All of which made the reality of fatherhood, of actually holding in my arms the life I’d helped to create, more overwhelming and powerful than I have words to describe. I was thrilled, I was awed, I was scared. And, just like that, I grew up.

He, not I, became my reason for being. His happiness, not mine, came first Selflessness, I learned, is part of fatherhood. But so is jealousy, I came to find out when April reappeared on the scene. And fear, fear of loss.

It took me a while to realize that fatherhood combined with motherhood results in parenthood. And that since parenthood is the natural order of things, there can be no losses, only wins.

Fatherhood—I guess it made a man out of me.

Regards,

Jared O’Neal