Mark went through his wife’s entire pregnancy in excitement. He was looking forward to the baby’s birth and was very happy when he found out they were going to have a son. Sarah had never been more cared for than during those nine months that flew by so quickly.
After the birth Mark went about cheerfully for a few days, bragging to colleagues, friends, and relatives that they had a healthy baby boy of three kilograms. But his enthusiasm waned with every day and every sleepless night. Mark was faced for the first time with an unmoving baby, then with diaper changes and baby nausea. He thought everything would be so rosy and easy, but he didn’t like helping his wife. When she had to go somewhere, leaving her son with his father, Mark would hide from the baby in his bedroom and not come out to cry.
– We will spoil him so much if we hang around him all the time,” he hid behind these words his laziness and unwillingness to sit with the child.
Afterwards it was my mother-in-law who came on weekends to babysit the baby, she also bathed and walked him when Mark’s wife was busy doing other things. And Mark was afraid to go near the baby because he immediately felt disgusted.
– Little children are not only cranky, but also stinky. They also look disgusting! Huge head, small body… like some aliens, – he shared at work.
He himself did not realize how unpleasant it sounds and what a father it makes him look like, until the year of the baby at the table gathered many guests. The baby was crying in the high chair and everyone ran to comfort him, while Mark sat there pushing his philosophy that the baby should be left alone so he would realize no one was coming and stop crying.
– What kind of a father are you? – his brother burst into discontent. – Your wife, grandmother, strangers – all running to comfort your son, and you sit still. When your son grows up, he’ll ask you how you took him in the stroller, and you’ll say you didn’t. He’ll ask you when you first said “daddy”, and again you’ll have nothing to answer, because your son doesn’t see his daddy at such a long table. Would it make you feel good if your family or parents avoided you the same way?
Mark felt a little hurt. He was watching, as if from a distance, how the child was growing up, but he couldn’t help himself.
– He will grow up a little more, – he said, – so that he could take him fishing, and no one will avoid him. Any fool knows that little kids are better handled by their mothers. And kids grow up and still don’t remember their first years.
