iii

"To be a successful father, there’s one absolute rule: when you have a kid, don’t look at it for the first two years."

-Ernest Hemmingway

            Due to forces out of my control (mostly sheer boredom), I have developed some truly nasty habits during the past few months, including (but definitely not limited to): slouching in chairs during meetings, staying up until early morning to write in falling-apart notebooks, and (the worst) texting during Mass.

            On nights like tonight, when I have to go to a later service than my family, I purposefully sit in the back corner of the church so that the screamingly-bright screen of my cell-phone draws the attention of the least number of people.  I am like a crack-addict roaming the shadows of the city’s graveled streets, shameful of his crippling malady. My streets, however, are the smooth faux-wood paneling of St. Elizabeth Ann Seton’s pews, my malady is the drug of constant communication, of uninterrupted contact with the outside secular.

            And tonight I was caught.  The little girl in the row in front of me, fidgeting between her parents, turned around halfway through the homily and, with wide, sad eyes, stared first at my phone and then at me, this criminal, this damned soul.

            For a second, I tried to make a silent excuse, my head and free hand bobbing idiotically, so sure of my innate innocence. But she continued to stare, her eyes, the same color as her dark blue hairpin, boring into my text-message-blackened soul, it seemed.

If I were her dad, I would quietly, deliberately drop whispers into her little girl ear, saying, “This is bad. Never do this.” And then I, as the responsible daddy, would turn around and focus on transubstantiation.

            When I am a father (I always say this as if it is a fact, a guaranteed future occurrence as true as “When I renew my driver’s license next week…” or “When I go to work in the morning…), I don’t know what I will do, say, or act in any given situation, emergency, or crisis. Unless there is some monster of a book, sacred, leather-bound, and pressed, that the tired nurse hands the equally-tired new father containing all of life’s secrets and step-by-step conversation installment guides, then, frankly, I’m screwed.

            But that is (maybe) years from now. I should be worrying about tomorrow, or the collared, putrid green shirt that I need to iron, or the spaghetti I need to heat up when I get home.

           

For right now, though, the least I can do is to put away my phone, which is still whinily vibrating incessantly against my tanned thigh, and listen to the words of the now-fourteen-minute-long homily. Maybe I’ll learn something, words of wisdom imparted from one Father to another.