an uncomfortable transition
Recently, I became a father. The moment I found out wasn’t like in the movies. It wasn’t the joyous outburst from finally receiving the hopeful result of planning and preparation - in truth, it wasn’t planned at all. My wife and I were just beginning to emerge from the incubator that the series of pandemic lockdowns had made of our cosy (read small) flat. The 18 months preceding oversaw an extremely dialled down wedding, two cancelled honeymoon trips, and countless hours cooped up with a back-to-back desk setup repurposed as a home office. We watched more TV shows than I care to recall, became well acquainted with the broad range of takeaway options our borough had to offer, and explored possibly every inch of green space within a 2-mile radius of our home.
Whilst I initially felt like I was thriving under these new set of circumstances, the novelty eventually wore thin and exposed, to my shock, that I apparently wasn’t impervious to the downsides of prolonged and mandated social restrictions.
On the heels of the slow easing of what we hoped would be the final iteration of UK restrictions, and with the backdrop of racial tension, political and economic turmoil, we discussed the idea of a several months' stint living abroad. Then I lost my job. Then we got pregnant.
shedding
Around the same time I experienced alopecia for the second time in my life. My wife noticed it first. A small round patch of smooth brown skin invading an otherwise rich canopy of black, tightly coiled hair. I wasn’t as phased as I was the first time round, it seemed like the least of my concerns given the impending responsibility on the horizon, but I have no doubt that they were linked. The soil was familiar. External pressure, internal uncertainty, an urgent need to walk into the unknown. The body is amazing in that way. Even when your mind tries to tell you otherwise, the body knows.
Nothing prepares you for fatherhood, not really. Like faith, it is something you surrender to with imperfect information and often under imperfect circumstances. Sure there are actions to take, things to buy etc. but like the snake shedding its skin, it’s the unfolding process of becoming that transforms you, and it isn’t immediate.
A part of you dies, a part of you is born, but both are justly due their rites: to be celebrated and to be mourned. There is danger in neglecting either. The transition into parenthood feels like that. The unencumbered “freedom” you once had to be self-centred and desire-driven in all its socially affirmed forms becomes like the parasitic identity that is shed with the old skin. Your declaration of independence with it too. Your alleged mastery of your destiny with it too. In exchange you’re entrusted with the most terrifyingly precious duty - to nurture a life that demands for you to be a better person than you were just moments before a shrill cry announced their arrival to the world.
being dad
A few months after Yaseen was born, I found myself in a small room at the back of a nursery in Lewisham. Seated in a semi-circle arrangement, a scattering of toys centering the room, each chair carried the weight of a man in the process of shedding. This was the first in a series of sessions funded by Mind, for new or expectant dads.
I could summarise the key takeaway in two words: effective communication. Cliché, yes, but clichés become so for a reason. They’re simple and invariably true. Communication tools were discussed, but that wasn't what I took away with me. In fact it was what I left in the room that was most profound. Each week provided a shared space of transition, each person’s story a reflection of that delicate procedure, facilitating the loss of my old skin and recognising my growth into the new. It’s not the solution based guidance as men we often default to, but it was reassuring to discover that I wasn't the only one neck-deep in discomfort. With each shared perspective a piece peeled and a weight lifted.
At various points in the flurry of time, my wife began noticing the hairs growing back on the previously naked patch of skin on my head. First fine and colourless, later thick and dark. After an emotionally fraught week, we finally left the hospital, baby in tow. I marked the occasion with a trip to my barbers. My hair was longer than it had ever been. As the clippers made contact, nearly two years worth of growth clumsily fell from my head, clumps of hair finding refuge on a small area of the shop floor surrounding the chair. My new skin exposed to the elements once again. The period for mourning complete.
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