My World At the Moment

On October 14th my world turned upside down.  Kaito's birth was a couple of weeks early and even though Hiroko and I were pretty well prepared, you're never really prepared to deal with a new child . . . never. . . ever. . . and we weren't.  Three day's after his birth I found myself checking my son in to the Hospital, sleeping on couches and chairs as he spent two days being treated for Jaundice.  Not where we expected to be.  But finding myself in a children's ward among kids and parents, who were dealing with devastating illness like cancer, opened my eyes to the realities of fatherhood rather quickly.  And despite Kaito's illness being fairly routine, let me tell you, when someone hooks your three day old son up to a machine to monitor his vital signs, it will make you go weak in the knees.  Two day's later, we were home and doing fine, but the realities of parenthood were stark and boundless joy mixed with cold hard panic and fear with nearly every moment.

I managed only two runs in the first three weeks of parenthood, and despite missing running, my responsibilities to my wife and son took priority over everything.  I routinely forgot to take my inhaler, didn't bother to even check the score of the Raider game, and didn't turn on the TV for weeks.  Blogging not only fell to the wayside, it nearly fell off the map when the responsibilities of parenthood combined with a new job at work.  However, slowly, day by day, as I've gotten more sleep, my life has begun to feel slightly more manageable . . . at times.  I've found time to run and workout regularly, the Raiders have been so Godawful that I don't even waste my time, hockey is on strike, but The Walking Dead and Radio Lab still provide my with some nice entertainment, and I even managed to run a race . . . . with only three hours of sleep.

And there is Kaito . . . he is now the center of everything.  Words are feeble things that can't hold the weight of meaning needed to describe the love a parent holds for their child, and I am not a skilled enough writer to adequately put them to the task.  Let me just say that the feeling of his hand wrapping around my finger will never fade from my memory.  And I never knew joy until I felt the softness of his hair or his feet kick the palm of my hand.   I can go on and on and on, but it is getting late and sleep in a rare commodity these days.  Not sure when I'll get back to blogging regularly, but when I find the time, I'll continue to write about the place in my life that I have carved out for running.