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Dad on a Lark

Today's blog is an exercise in pure anxiety. It's about my newspaper problem.

Years ago in my pre-fatherhood life, over lunch with an old college friend, I mentioned something I'd read that morning in the New York Times, and he winced. What with two little kids, he told me, he no longer had time for the Times. Couldn't keep up. He'd begun actually to hate the Sunday Times in particular, he confessed — it was so big. Finally he let the subscription lapse. Why read movie reviews, anyway, if you never went to a movie?

I'm sure I blanched. Did becoming a parent really mean you had to cave in like that? From where I stood, abandoning the Times seemed such a frank admission of retreat. You gave up on the big world — the world of book reviews, of op-ed pieces and smart columnists tossing off opinions you could discuss at your kitchen table — and you substituted the little world of your family instead. I told myself that if someday I ever had children, I'd never surrender like that.

Flash forward to a typical morning in my life now. I go downstairs to get Larkin's breakfast ready and let Bert the Bulldog outside. On the porch I pick up our two morning papers — our local Hartford Courant and the New York Times, in its blue plastic bag. Back inside, the Courant goes on the kitchen counter. I take the Times into the living room. In the corner by the Morris chair is a big pile of blue plastic bags — assorted Times from the past two weeks, ones I haven't gotten around to reading yet.

I add today's to the pile.

The problem began when Larkin was born. The Times kept coming, but now I had a lot more to do. Soon those little blue bags were everywhere. Atop the bookshelf. Tucked into a corner of the sofa. Strewn across the dining room table. Eventually they'd make it to the 2-foot-high pile of newspaper sections on the buffet. I'd have these frenzied sessions in which I'd go through the stack, triaging like mad, glancing at headlines, speed-reading shorter articles, saving longer ones for later. I actually still have New York Times Magazines dating back before Larkin's birth. It's as if merely by having them, I maintain a bridge to the time before I was a father — as if somehow I might get back there.

Today is the day I realize things have gotten completely out of control.

"I think I have a newspaper problem," I say to Molly when she comes down with the Lark.

She laughs — oh, really? She suggests maybe I should give up the Times. She looks around at all the blue bags. "I mean, it's kind of an empty gesture at this point, don't you think?"

"Thanks," I say, tersely. "I'll take that under advisement."

But what happens if I give up the Times? The question possesses a whole bunch of symbolic (and neurotic) significance. It's like George Costanza's hilarious riff on "independent George" in Seinfeld. If I stop getting the Times, Independent Rand will die! Informed Rand, Conversational Rand, Essay-and-Story-Writing Rand! I can't let him be entirely replaced by Dad Rand. By Doting Rand. Goo-Goo Rand. Baby-Clothes-Shopping Rand. Househusband, Oatmeal-Stirring, Stroller-Steering, Diaper-Changing, Are-You-Splatty-for-Daddy? Rand. Can I?

No, I have to keep Worldly Rand alive — and in my mind I can only do that by opening that little blue bag, day after day, and ingesting its contents.

And so, after Molly leaves to take Larkin to morning day care, I speed my way through the Hartford Courant, grateful for a paper that can be read in entirety in 12 minutes; and then I sit down and take a big bite of this morning's Times. Ah, the fascinating story on some kid blogger who's dominating TV industry news! The Kakutani review of Pynchon's new novel! The travel report from Alaska! Munch munch munch! Down it goes, the invigorating daily dose of the big world you get inside that little blue bag. It's like spinach to Popeye. Worldly Rand is back!

But no sooner am I done than my day comes crashing back in. There is a yard to mow, a run to the store for diapers, bills to pay, Bert's new doghouse to hammer together. Not to mention the book review that's due, or three pieces to edit pronto, or those calls I promised to make for a fund-raiser two weeks ago. And all this in the four-and-a half short hours before I pick Larkin up?

For the hundredth time I recognize that there's not enough space in my life; something has to give. And so, feeling a strange exhilaration, I march around the house collecting all those unread newspapers ... and dump them into recycling. Then I take the blue bags down into the yard and use them to pick up Bert's poop. What a perfect metaphor — the big world, replaced by domestic crap. All I can do is laugh, really.

At some point or another, every new parent faces this dilemma. You're caught between the rock of your longstanding identity and the hard place of a crowded routine that centers now around a child. Molly and I talk about how we've had to change since Larkin. Molly by nature is a neat person and a perfectionist, and sometimes she looks around at the chaos that used to be her desk, and just shakes her head. "Can you believe this is my desk?" she says.

Amid all the joys of new parenthood, there are important things — things you value — that you have to let go of. It's a lesson one has to learn in life generally, but parenthood truly brings it home. That bridge back to who you were, it isn't actually there, except in your mind. And even if it were there, would you really want to go back?