. . . not fifteen months from the ceremony, [Keri] gave birth to a seven pound, two ounce daughter whom we named Jenna.
THE CHRISTMAS BOX
THERE WAS ANOTHER MOTIVATION to my wanting to work full time. Keri had just quit her job to give birth to our first child: a beautiful daughter we named Jenna. I fell madly in love with this little girl. And fatherhood.
Ironically, early in our marriage I had no desire to have children—a postnuptial discovery that left Keri panicked. As odd as it seems now, we had never discussed children before getting married, I because I was not interested in them, and Keri because she had just assumed that anyone coming from such a large family would want them. It’s not that I didn’t like children. I just thought of them in the same way I thought of boats—occasionally fun, but not worth the trouble of ownership.
The not-so-subtle pressure to “breed” from parents and grandparents made me even more resistant to the idea. Keri and I eventually learned to limit our discussion of children because it always led to fights.
Then, one night at a party, I ran into a friend I hadn’t seen for a while. I had always considered him a worldly guy, and I was surprised to hear him spouting the virtues of fatherhood. Later that evening he cornered me. “You have no idea what you’re missing,” he said. “Having children is the greatest thing out there. Nothing in life has made me this happy.” I gave him my well-rehearsed “Thanks but no thanks” speech, but that evening I began thinking about what he had said. Suddenly I felt a strange new feeling I would best describe as a curious strain of homesickness. I felt an intense longing for a child.
The next morning I told Keri I was ready. Keri was not only surprised, she was flustered. It was easy to push against a wall knowing it was immovable. “I don’t know if I’m ready,” she said. A week later she decided that she was. Ten months later Jenna was born.
