flying home

Clara and I (and the fetus) flew home this past weekend to visit my family and tell them the Big News.  That went as planned but as we were flying to Dallas we ended up sitting across the aisle from what was probably a 2-year-old traveling with her mother.  The little girl was enjoying herself thoroughly before the flight - running up and down the gate area while her mother gently reminded her to keep her eyes open when she ran so as to avoid plowing into things.  The little girl was considerably less enthused about things once we were airborne.  Clara and I think she had a nasal infection or some other condition that made the short half-hour flight painful for her.  She cried throughout the flight and in a manner most disturbing to me repeatedly called out, "Daddy!  Daddy!"

Crying children have always bothered me not in a annoying sort of way but in a deeper, emotional manner.  I'm not entirely certain where this goes back to, but my earliest memories of feeling this way go back close to 30 years.  I was in the hospital for one of my many asthma-related illnesses.  I'm pretty sure my Dad was staying with me (he usually took the night shift) and he was sleeping late one night when I awoke to hear crying in from down one of the hallways of the hospital.  I never knew who the child was or what was the matter, but I remember feeling how powerless I felt as a child myself laying in that hospital bed.  Fast-forward 30 years and I still feel no less powerless.  Even though now I have the power (and soon the authority) to pick up and comfort a child, I don't really know how exactly to do that.  I am told that this along with other aspects of parenting will come to me in time, but my fear or discomfort or whatever over my responsibility for the pain of a little one does weigh on me.  I suppose it's not that I worry that I won't know how to love the little guy enough - it's that I won't be able to translate that love into meaningful action.