Prepared and Ready
‘Mom, it’s time’, I hurried over the phone.
‘For whaaaat,’ she drew out with a Southern drawl.
‘Babies, Mom. They’re coming. Today,’ I tried to punctuate.
‘They can’t,’ she plead as the inevitability of the situation began to sink in.
‘We go to the OR in 45 minutes.’
‘But I can’t get there,’ now fully aware of the what was happening.
‘I don’t know what to tell you Mom. It’s time.’
Click.
She hung up on me. My mother hung up on me. She still denies it but she did. She hung up out of urgency, shifting her day to align with this new reality.
Mom knew the process. She had three kids of her own and knew the timing of how a pregnancy becomes a baby. She also knew that when a baby is ready to arrive, it will.
Mom also knew to take my call. She knew we were pregnant with two at the same time. She knew we were getting close. She knew the pregnancy had its drama and that anything was possible. She knew all of this and she still hung up on me.
There’s a difference, Mom taught me, between being prepared and being ready. She prepared her ‘go bag’ in case she was needed and she prepared her staff, putting in contingencies so that work didn’t stop just in case she got the call. She was wholly prepared, having done diligence I didn’t realize grandmothers did for the arrival of a newborn, but her heart wasn’t ready in that moment.
As she shifted her gears down the interstate, her preparedness became readiness. She arrived and with enough thoughtfulness to bring Dad (although that wasn’t a given. She was clear that he could drive himself if he stood between her and new grandbabies). She was present. She was available. She was in tears as grandmothers are, watching through the plate glass window as her grandchildren were rolled into the nursery. She hugged my wife gingerly and fully. She was ready.
Years later, those same children come to me with questions, “Dad, are you Santa Claus?” I sit stunned as if I never thought this question would come up. I was neither prepared nor ready. So I bought some time with a lollipop and did what every grown man does: called Mom. This time she didn’t hang up on me.
Much of parenting, I’m learning, is about being as prepared as possible. I’m always amazed at how a 9-pound human can travel with enough stuff to fill a minivan. Parents preparing for any possible scenario. The folks at Target are glad to equip new parents with checklists of stuff to quell any potentiality. But who has the checklist for their hearts? Who can help with answering the hard questions? Should I prepare a speech about Santa? How do I explain that my son’s friend has two daddies? How do I handle ‘Daddy, I heard a bad word on the bus today. What does *#$! mean?’
It’s overwhelming. I don’t know how to handle these situations. I don’t have good answers. But I’m growing ready. I have to because, like my wife’s pregnancy, the questions I receive from my children are inevitable. They will learn where babies come from, whether from me or from the friendly new student two rows behind them on the bus, which fails us all. So I should prepare. I should prepare my speech and prepare my heart. I should prepare so that I am ready when they are.
They are growing up. It’s inevitable. We’d be concerned if they weren’t. They will eventually reach an age where their bodies change and have a first love. And have their hearts broken. These inevitabilities don’t have to be debilitating. With some intention, these discussions can become conversations rather than lectures. With some intention, we can develop foundational responses in advance so that we can navigate real-time on scaffolding set in place.
This is the hope of this work: To share forward the work my bride and I are doing to be ready when needed.