best laid plans...

I’m a planner. I can’t help it—it’s just who I am. It’s like being born with wide feet or a weak chin. It annoys the wife, and I can certainly understand why. Our weekly trip to the grocery store requires a budget hearing and the drafting of two lists, one with expected daily meals and another detailing the items necessary to prepare expected daily meals (broken down into categories, of course, for maximum efficiency). All of this just to purchase $60 worth of groceries. So, needless to say, TERROR (laced with elation) was the inherent feeling that welled within me the day the wife deftly proclaimed, “I’m pregnant…I think.” She was holding a pregnancy test that apparently wasn’t worth the twenty freakin’ dollars it cost. It’s not that the reading wasn’t conclusive; it just wasn’t conclusive enough (for me at least).

Later that afternoon, she took a second test that all but spelled it out. Our fate was sealed with two pink lines; we were going to be parents. Not planned parents, mind you, but parents nonetheless. So thus began the whirlwind that has been our life these past 8 months. We’ve done what I expect all soon-to-be parents do—inform the grandparents, have sonograms, prepare the nursery, find daycare, start a blog (for the hip soon-to-be-parents), and pray to the parenting gods to bestow upon us the wisdom to raise a happy, healthy, and productive young citizen who will one day master the Universe. Actually, I’d settle for him merely surviving long enough to a.) scalp us cheap tickets to UGA home games, b.) let us crash at his apartment afterwards, and c.) provide us with a few years of cheap labor around the house. After all, the tax deduction is just icing on the cake when you consider the extended benefits a child provides. Fortunately, the gods have looked down on us with favor—so far at least. Our doctor visits have shown that little Jasper is right as rain (as his mother says). He has the right number of limbs, and seems to be progressing the way unborn babies should. “Perfect” was the word used by the doctor at our last visit, and that’s all we’ve hoped for these past 8 months. After all, you can’t “plan” for your child to be healthy. And when you can’t plan, you hope.

As Jasper grows up, I’ll let him make his own plans in life. I don’t have a set path for him to follow. I’ll let him blaze his own trail, and find his own answers to his own questions. It’s the best thing a father can do for his son. We didn’t plan to be parents, but we’ll try to do right by him. He’ll be fed, clothed, sheltered, and educated. He’ll have grandparents to spoil him, aunts and uncles to guide him, and a small patch of the great South that he can call home. It’s all a boy could hope for. But most importantly, and above all these things, he’ll be loved—that much he can certainly plan on.