When my wife became pregnant, I went to a woman – a grandmother – to learn how to change diapers. However, it did not end well.
I had developed a personal addiction towards caring for my soon-to-expand family and I’d help out with house chores when time permits. I know that I was not doing it for her but for myself because we had time to talk about every other thing in our lives, the baby and what will be best for him. It had metamorphosed into a desperate search for solutions even before the problems came. I spent time off work helping her maintain an exercise routine that would help her to lessen the stress she’d feel. I have always being upfront with issues and such attitude ‘d helped when life calls for drastic measures.
Sitting in this tiny flat with aged walls and paint that had struggled to stick to its companion, I ran my eyes through family pictures hung at different positions in the sitting room . They showed somewhat of a gap from what was and what was obtainable.
They were that of my tutor and instructor and her family. The pictures fused right into my senses. I have always wished to have a family that large with children running around in the house and the first seed of that prayer was on its way. I wished to relive my childhood with my children and probably make it more fun.
Being the only child from my parents robbed me of many things. I was my own sibling and I wanted to re-create everything that I had lost with my own kids. That urge to love both he that would come and she that has being there grew with each ticking of the clock. For marriages end before they actually end but kindness endures.
I waited patiently for hours for the tutor to finish with a client, a man who looked tired and bored. Life played him tricks. I have always been impatient with a lot of things and people. My impatience was drowned at the alter of imagination of he that I was yet to meet and I wanted the best of everything for him.
I ‘d lay on the bed, like a baby snagging for snacks, head tilted to his mother’s side and listen as he kicked in her mother’s belly. The truth is, I have never been in love like that before, because I felt life in a new form and I did all that were necessary for the preservation of that love. It gave me wings and I flew with them, into the itchy fingers of my tutor whom I had found on an Internet site listing with the boasting of an impressive CV and pictures of hundreds of clients – all males.
The first day of my lesson was a rather intriguing one. She has raked accolades for being primordial with things and had attended to well over five thousand clients – men who just like myself, wanted to learn new things and help out the best way that they could. For a time, it gave me hope – those huge numbers – as I discovered that there were a lot of people before me; people who loved with their hearts and not just their heads, people who saw family as a sort of football game where team work is required.
We ‘d go through the basics over and over again with an old mannequin she used for demonstration that had a pre-dirtied diaper around the waist area.
It seemed really easy: sticking my fingers in a butter coated diaper. I was impressed at the simplicity that the task seemingly exhumed. However, as we progressed, we needed to actually practicalize it with a read human baby and that was the beginning of the death of my enthusiasm.
I sat for hours waiting for her grandson to poo. The boy cried a lot but I loved him like he was mine. I wished he never pooed for the day but minutes before my patience waned, the boy had desecrated his diaper. “The cries and lack of comfort are the first signs you will have to look out for” She said with her hands folded calmly behind her back, watching gleefully as I tested the strength of my endurance.
I unsealed the diaper and washed him to spotlessness. That was part of the process but she ‘d bring soup and requested that I lick it with my fingers seconds after I had finished washing the boy. I stared into her wide, bright and ancient eyes and shuddered. I can’t, I muttered. I’ d have to wash my hands for days before I could use them to touch anything edible.
She pleaded for understanding. I pleaded for patience. I think I was being feminized in a way that I don’t understand.
It was gross and I felt like I should puke. “That is what mothers do everyday” she said and flashed a gawky smile with a compelling look that begged not to be disobeyed. I am not a mother I quipped impulsively. More so, I was expecting a bottle of beer or whisky for the job of the day and not soup. I spent the rest of the day rejecting her pleas. It is suicidal sticking those same fingers into my mouth and I’d stopped attending after that day.
My wife was perfect in everything, depending on the part that you would likely enjoy for the day. I gloated in the false assumption that I can equally be perfect in everything. I’d try out many things on days that I was less busy because I wanted to help more and shoulder a bit of the burden. Some I’d succeed at, others I failed terribly.
After my son came, a special aspect of our lives — my wife and I, took flight. The sex was gone and we would not even get it in our sleep. He cried each time the thought came to mind and became the biological clock that timed our troubles. I would laugh off such infant wickedness coming from my little rays of sunshine. He was in charge of our happiness and we willingly surrendered everything to him . Even the times that my mind took strolls into the abyss of uncertainties and would cough in the middle silent meditations, his crying always replies me.
