It's never going to be the same again. This is my thought as we head down the stairs and exit theater 22. It's the first time we've gone to the movies in months, more than anything because we hate how crowded the theaters get and how rude and annoying people are. So this random Monday night that we've ventured out (to a blessedly empty theater) is ordinary, but uncommon just the same.
And it hits me then that this is it. That in the coming months life will irrevocably change; that we'll become just like every other parent, desperate to be alone, to go on a date, to have a taste of the old days; that we are now bound by a living creature who is more important than any of our issues, our ego-centric manias, our dramas, and that won't ever change. If ever we thought we could walk out of each other's lives and never look back, all ties severed -- that will never again be an option.
It won't ever again be about him, or me, or us two. And though we have made our personal resolves about the most personal and intimate parts of our relationship, although we are on the same page about the kind of parents we want to be -- the kinds of values we want to instill and how we plan to do so, the kind of discipline we plan to hand down, the kind of unbreakable union we will always present to our children -- we nonetheless fear that we will lose the best parts of ourselves, that this one tiny being and the others who will follow will obliterate who we are as individuals.
We are united in this fear of losing all our other identities to the one of "mom" and "dad," because although that is the one that will change everything forever, it is not the one we want to define us. We don't want to let go of what we are now, and yet we?re well aware that it's fear of the unknown, fear of the power that parenthood will have over us, that makes us feel this way.
But it's over. Our son is on his way, and whether he makes it safe and sound or not, whether he is healthy or not, whether he is a good person or not, nothing will ever be the same again. I am now a mother. He is now a father. We have entered a new world. One that is unfamiliar, frightening, and threatening to consume us.
And already we adore him beyond comprehension.
