Ronan is told he will have cake and ice cream for the first time.
He's holding his tootbrush.
Friday will be Ronan’s first birthday. He’s survived his first year. This is the seventy-sixth entry on this blog.
We’ve all survived. In some ways, it’s been a tough year. I had a big fight with my now-former employer, leading to much anger and depression. Terry’s job went from full-time to contract employment, and there’s not much out there to replace it. If Ronan weren’t in our lives to make this a wonderful year, it would be one of the more depressing years of my life.
But he was born, and everything seems to pale in comparison. Job problems suck, but they point out just how lucky Terry and I are in terms of the beautiful baby boy we got early Wednesday morning, April 4, 2007.
I’m going to look for temp work now, until Terry goes back to work, but the past 18 months – I was working on my websites before he was born – have been wonderful. Being home, besides letting me set up unforkids.com, gave me a chance to fully participate in Ronan’s gestation and birth, and then to be home with him every day.
I will always cherish this time we had together. Many years from now, when to his horror he discovers this blog and makes me pull it down in a fit of embarrassment, perhaps he will read these entries in this online diary before demanding that the site be nuked. For a little while at least, I hope he learns a little bit about how he came to be, what his birth meant to us, and what his first year taught us.
Being married is a wonderful thing. Sometimes I have trouble understanding how much my life was lacking without Terry. I wasn’t unhappy; I had lots of friends, a good career, and many projects and hobbies to work on. But you never miss what you don’t understand. It’s not just that being married is a wonderful thing; being married to Terry is the wonderful thing in my life. Even when I’m annoyed at her for constantly asking if I’ve done something or to get something or whatever – she is acting out of her deep love for me (and now for Ronan). She makes me want to be a better person. She is the most caring, compassionate, respectful, graceful, joyous, temperate, enjoyable person I could be married to. She’s the only woman I’ve ever truly loved, and I hope to be with her for a long, long time. I can’t express to you, if you’ve never found someone that was your soulmate, how different a relationship can be. I waited for someone I really loved, and that is more complicated and sweeter than words can convey. Now that we’re married I can only wonder what it was like to not have her in my life. Sometimes I pity my unmarried, pre-Terry self for being so ignorant of what true love could be. I cannot imagine my life without her; it’s like we’ve been together for eternity, and will be together for eternity. I’m sure some gentle readers are thinking, “Yeah, dude, whatever! Get back to the Dad blog!” but it’s important that you understand how committed I am to my marriage to understand the next paragraph.
Ronan came into our lives about 18 months ago and emerged a year ago, and I cannot imagine what my life was before his arrival. Again, I have this overwhelming sense of emerging out of ignorance into a new understanding, not just of myself, but of Terry, and most importantly of our commitment to each other and to Ronan. At first, things weren’t peaches and cream. We had to learn to be parents, and later we had to learn to be parents in the face of being depressed about our financial and our job situations. This sometimes caused some stress. But we endured, and the reward was more than we could imagine. Some parents reading this will not be surprised, but Ronan has a personality all his own, even when he was just a few months old. There are glimpses of Terry, traces of me, but most of the time he is just Ronan. I have grown to love him very fiercely, and again I cannot imagine what my life would be like without him.
Whatever our job situation, this family is where I was destined to be. For all those people who wondered if I was ever going to get married, or what I was waiting for, I have it now. Here’s to the rest of my life. Regardless of what happens, there isn’t any other place I would rather be.