I will tell you right now: I never intended to have kids. I am very much not a kid-person. To pre-children-having me, kids seemed like creepy mucus-and-shit-spewing midget retards with speech impediments. And they still do, and did, even when mine were little, except for mine. Mine were teeny little people with distinct personalities, whom, to my great surprise, I loved fiercely. Other children, though…specifically, your children? Creepy mucus-and-shit-spewing midget retards with speech impediments. If your child sits behind me on a long flight kicking my seat, please know that I will stuff it down the toilet, even if it jams up the plumbing. Fair warning. To be safe, you should put it in your checked baggage. Don't forget to poke air holes.

            My X-wife wanted kids. Fair enough; she was the one who had to deal with the pregnancy, the birth (seriously, have you ever seen one? It's like The Exorcist, but with a lot more icky-colored goo coming out of more orifices), the lactation, the me singing, "Lactation, all I ever wanted..." for like a year. (The Go-Gos? Goddesses to me.) My X and the nurse-midwife were the only people in that delivery room who had any real role; my contribution was the occasional admonition to, "Breathe! Breathe!" (Like that was necessary, you know? "Oh, honey, why am I turning blue? Damn it, I forgot to breathe!") Nevertheless, I did feel part of the team, and lucky not to be the part of the team that was passing a whole roasting-chicken-sized human being out her personal girl parts. Seriously, if men had uteruses (uteri?), we would have Star Trek transporters to beam babies right the fuck out, and drugs that not only stop all pain but are administered in bacon form. Plus, you'd be able to get a drive-through abortion.

            I manned up and did (roughly) my share of getting up at night, changing diapers (they suck you in with the inoffensive little odorless mustard-colored poo at the beginning, then after a bit you begin to suspect the Budweiser Clydesdales are pooping in that diaper), feeding and burping (which brought out my competitive side; I'd chug a beer or a bottle of seltzer right before). Number One Daughter and I danced to Paul Simon's Graceland when she was six months old. (The fancy footwork was all me.) When she started standing on her own--which took a while; she felt no need to walk, because we had wood floors which she scooted on like a fucking cheetah (some mutant scooting cheetah, you understand)--I'd help by singing, "Get up, stand up, stand up for your rights!" to encourage her. (Or because I'm possibly a dick, maybe.) I made baby food from fresh ingredients. Then I bought baby food, because making it from fresh ingredients was a big giant pain in the ass, and it's not like she had much of a palate, being, you know, a baby. "Oh, daddy, I find the green glop delightfully pretentious, while the orange barf-like mass is a tad…floral," translated into Baby is, "Gah!"

            I thought I had the whole baby-wrangling process pretty much beat when Number Two Daughter came along. (I got to race up the Dan Ryan Expressway at well over a hundred miles an hour. I loved labor. How often, if you're a boy, do you get to drive as fast as your car will go?) (My X found the whole labor and delivery process less exhilarating.) Feeding, changing, getting up at night, right, got it, what else you got? Hey, how about: screaming pain from ear infections every two weeks and she didn't sleep through the night her whole first year? That'll inflict some damage on your Zen calm, and turn rational human beings (which even at my best I am not) (I mean, you've read my posts, right?) into something resembling lycanthropes. When we had drainage tubes put in her ears, and the pediatric surgeon brought her out, limp and logy, and put her in my arms, I realized I would kill or die for this little shit-factory. As a person who thought of himself as a monster of vanity and narcissism (hey, on me it looks good), this shook my self-image to the core.

            My X and I separated just before Number Two Daughter was three; we divorced a year later. It was nobody's fault, really (it's conceivable it was my fault); we were just too different to continue together. (Dude, it was totally my fault.) My kids started spending a week at their mom's and a week at my place. I fought--hard--for that. I really didn't want to be Uncle Daddy, the dude who takes his kids to the zoo every other week; I felt it was important that someone teach them that the Clash was the most important band in the history of our planet (certain dinosaur bands might have equaled the Clash; the fossil record is unclear), that the near-fundamentalism in their other home was bizarre and insane, and that Ani Difranco was a higher form of life than mere humans. (Her albums didn't suck back then, which helped.)

I loved reading to them, and kept on long after they could read to themselves. When we recently saw a preview for the upcoming Where the Wild Things Are movie, we all bounced excitedly in our seats; they can still, decades later, quote pretty much all of that book. We travelled; on a windy night across from a graveyard in Pacific Grove, California where a herd of deer grazed, we started reading A Wrinkle In Time. One or the other of them puked in Maine, in Los Angeles, on a double-decker bus in London and along a crocodile-filled river in Australia. You don't think about puke much when you make that fateful decision to have children. You should.

            I tried to hold them as lightly as ever I could and never to force what I believed on them. Though a shy retiring sort, I did manage to let them know what I thought; if they disagreed, fine, as long as they argued well and didn't mind being mocked. Mercilessly. (I still remind Number One Daughter about her argument in favor of the boy bands she liked at 11 versus the punk and folk I listened to: "How many people listen to your stuff, Dad, and how many people listen to 'N Synch?" If she's by my deathbed, repeating those words back to her might well be the last thing I do on earth.) (Yes, I am a bit eee-vil.) I tried to impress on them that a sense of humor is far more powerful than a sense of outrage. (Something I'd remind a great many adults too, including sometimes myself.) When Number One Daughter came home from school infuriated because her classmates used the phrase "That's so gay" in a derogatory way (she was the president of the Queer-Straight Alliance), I pointed out that she could work herself into a snit and take offense, which would just convince those classmates that she was humorless, or she could laugh at it, and them, and herself. "That's so gay," after years of use, still remains one of our favorite ironic catchphrases for things that, you should pardon the expression, suck. And also? For things that are gay.

            Being a dad changed me, and made me better. (I know. Imagine how fucked up I would have been.) I stopped caring so much about my career. I had to think of the Little Girls Elliot before myself and certainly before work; it was a happy limitation, one that made me think about how important work really is. (Unsurprising answer: not so very, except writing.) I had to be home to meet them after school; I couldn't work late or travel. I got, to use a phrase I despise, mommy-tracked. I hope you'll pardon me for believing my life is probably richer than one spent in some corporate Habitrail. But I didn't live for my kids; I had plenty to do in my own life. (Because what? I should crawl into a coffin half the time?) (I mean, except recreationally.) I found those parents who invested all they had and all they were in their kids' successes and failures to be way creepy. I dated. I pursued my own interests, I did the things I wanted to do, and I made it clear they were invited, but not required, to share in any or all of it (well, not the dating), and by and large they took what they wanted and needed.

            Number Two Daughter just left for college, and I'm still adjusting to not actively being a dad for the first time in 21 years. (To the neighbors: thanks for your forbearance;  the drunken orgies will stop, oh, next month sometime. The month after at the latest.) (And, once again, very sorry about the goats.) I feel a little like Tom Lehrer's Werner Von Braun (except for the Nazi-being part): "'Once the rockets are up, who cares where they come down? That's not my department,' says Werner Von Braun." I launched them; now they're in control. Oh, I'm around if they run into trouble (except if they want to move back into my house, which, what, are there no homeless shelters?), but it's not the same, really. I'm not involved day-to-day.

I'm a little melancholy to realize that an enterprise I've spent so much time and effort on is finished, but also fascinated. What will I be when I'm not a dad? Just for a start, I do hope to be the kind of aging parent who takes out his failures on his adult children (brief list: novel not published, still only 5'3", never made out with Tori Amos), hectoring them and blaming them for all my shortcomings. (Hee! See what I did there? Shortcomings, because of how I'm… Oh, never mind.) (Just one more thing I'll be taking out on my kids.) I plan to be bitter and crotchety (well, more bitter and crotchety, and also? possibly Swedish), the crazy old coot whose house the neighborhood kids avoid walking past. I have been practicing shouting, "Hey, you kids! Get off my lawn!" out my sunroom window even though I don't actually have a lawn, and there are, in fact, no actual kids out there. (It bemuses the homeless guys and hookers.) Also, I want to have much more sex, some of it not with myself, but I've been wanting that since high school. Keep hope alive!

Truthfully, I want to be the kind of parent to my adult kids that I tried to be when they were small, available but not intrusive. (Number One Daughter is on her own when it comes to getting that body out of her crawlspace, though.) (She tells me everyone's got one; it's the new yappy little dog.) You might not approve, but it worked for them and it worked for me. I am eager to see what they become too, what my kids will be when they're not kids. I'm curious to see what we all make of our new lives (my guess: "disaster, same as before"), and in the meantime, it's amazing how much butter you get to keep and use when no one leaves it out of the refrigerator overnight.