In the cruel hours of pregnancy insomnia, I’ve been trying to figure out the most accurate natural disaster metaphor to illustrate preparing for and having a baby. It’s not a tornado or an earthquake due to the lead time that you get during pregnancy. Also, in the case of an earthquake, it’s not something that I’m so afraid of that I won’t book a plane ticket to California. A hurricane is a closer fit, because there is warning and time to empty out your freezer (or in this case, fill it). But nothing about clearing out tree branches or sitting on the porch waiting for the electricity to come back on really works, except for the excessive sweating.
Then I realized: having a baby isn’t a hurricane when you live an hour from the coast. It’s a hurricane when you live right on the beach, the dirty side is going to pass right over your house, and you choose not to evacuate.
Right now I’m the guy on the news with a cigarette and a bag of Tostitos, saying, “It’s not my first hurricane and it probably won’t be my last.” Soon I’m going to be the person who is terrified and strapping my self to an Igloo ice chest at two in the morning to try to stay afloat while the roof is ripped off my house and water simultaneously rises up through the floor. At some point you’ll see me back on the news, disheveled, drinking a beer (it’s good for your milk supply!) and mostly incoherent. The kindhearted will bring food, bags of ice, and a huge box of second-hand shoes that I’ll have to deal with at some point. A few months later, I’ll be scrubbing the mold out of my shower, because while the disaster relief crew that brings your children stuffed animals showed up to help, the one who scrubs bathroom mold went to the bigger city with better press coverage.
A year or two later, when we’ve rebuilt our home, the details of the hurricane will be a distant memory, worth it because we get to live at the beach.
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