Happy Dad

I spent a little less than twelve years living in New York City, and I enjoyed it – so much so that when I took the train there from Rhode Island today and saw the skyline of Manhattan for the thousandth time it put knots of hope and longing in my stomach. What always used to put knots in my stomach, knots of a different sort, was walking around the city and seeing people more glamorous than I, more wealthy than I, more present than I, seemingly more everything than I thought I could ever be. Various spiritual practices helped me with the envy in the last few years I lived there, but nothing came close to salving my pain the way it was salved today.

Today, whenever I saw someone with nicer clothes than mine, a seemingly greater sense of purpose (or career) than my own, or anything of the kind, I simply asked the following question: is this person the father of my baby? If the answer was no, then I understood, in my gut, that he or she was not more fortunate than I. And I could simply observe their success, glamour, or splendor with the kind of detachment that saner people than myself have shown without any special gimmicks or tricks since time began.

Returning home by train at the end of a frenetic day of moving around the city by subway, bus, and foot, it was impossible not to feel different feelings of hope and longing in my stomach again, as I contemplated seeing my sleeping daughter’s face and hearing the sound of her nighttime rustlings and breathing in the family bed.