You can never prepare enough to be a father.
There isn't a school that you can attend. Or a book you can pick up from the bookstore.
For the entire 9 or so months of pregnancy, your wife's that is, you'd try to find out what to expect when baby finally comes along.
But every other parent will tell you the same thing and that's "You can never prepare enough to be a father."
The questions continue to flow in but you can't be sure who to believe.
You're right there through her cravings for a Coke at midnight. Weekends after weekends of Banana Leaf Rice and an occasional Dim Sum feast. And Lamaze classes is really a breather from her mood swings and unexpected tears.
In the delivery room. You pull yourself together for the sake of your wife whose cervix is opening up for baby to come out. You don't give away even a hint of fear. You look cool through it all. Hold her hand. Take a punch or two if needed. She's having a baby. You're just waiting for it all to end and maybe catch some sleep after. Well that's not entirely true, but it will cross your mind.
Soon enough, the vagina begins to throb. "Push with your mouth closed." the nurse says. Something roundish will try to force its way out of that vertical passage. The doctor makes a tiny snip and helps that alien-looking creature catch a glimpse of light along with the umbilical cord, that 'bag' thing and lots of blood. "Don't look directly at it," they say. "It's something you can't un-see."
Then it happens.
By a simple twist of fate, the baby is placed into my arms first instead of his mum's. That's when everything changes.
Nothing can ever be the same again. That's it. It's changed forever.
I'm holding my flesh and bone. My first born. My son.
There has to be a God. A supreme being that rules over our lives. We can't be doing this on our own. Nothing like this can ever happen by itself.
I'm gonna be the best father for this boy. I will not try. I will do it.
My life has ended. His life is all there is. And there's nothing more that I can tell myself. There it was that burning bush and the voice in the sky.
You can never prepare enough to be a father.
