What Have I Done?: The Fatherhood Experience

In my line of work as a jet-setting journalist, I’m lucky enough to try a lot of things that are actually extreme. I stress actually extreme to differentiate freediving with sharks from things like drinking Mountain Dew and watching MTV! Recently, I had an experience that reminded me raising a kid is about as actually extreme as it gets.

The need for speed
I hooked up with an outfit called Fighter Combat International in Arizona to pilot a stunt plane. The airplane was an Extra 300L: an aerobatic aircraft with a “no prohibited maneuvers” certification from the FAA. This means, in essence, the 300L can do things that would rip the wings off of any other plane.

Prior to the flight, Otter, my co-pilot, handed me a thick stack of barf bags. “Here are your boarding passes,” he said with a wink.

Otter described 10 maneuvers we could try if I was feeling up to it. These ranged from a fairly benign loop to the outlandish “inverted accelerated flat spin.” Because I was on assignment, I decided I needed to fly all the stunts. Of course, I was making that determination on the ground.

The simple act of lifting off in the 300L was gut-wrenching. While a commercial plane elevates along a gradual parabola, the 300L projected itself to altitude with a single terrific heave. The g-force was so severe I had to flex my thigh and stomach muscles to keep from going into g-LOC (gravity-induced loss of consciousness). If takeoff was such an ordeal, I wondered, could I possibly survive 10 maneuvers?

Still, I was determined, and as we progressed through the list — loop, hammerhead turn, Lomcevak (it means “headache” in Czech) — I found myself saying “yes” each time Otter asked if I was ready for another trick. I also noticed that when I was doing something really brainbending — hanging in my straps and gunning the plane earthwards — I would instinctively purse my lips and exhale forcefully through them. This reflexive breathing helped steady my nerves and allowed me fly all 10 stunts.

The need for feed
A few months after my stunt flying experience, my wife was performing in a dance concert that kept her occupied every night for a week. This left me in charge of the kids, and while Oliver, the 2-year-old, wasn’t much of a problem, Max, the 5-month-old, had a hard time adjusting to bottle-feeding. For some reason, he just couldn’t master the idea that the bottle contained food.

This was incredibly frustrating. You know when babies cry so hard they stop breathing for about 20 seconds at a time? Max was hitting that plateau for hours. We were thus embattled one evening — Max hysterical from starvation while I stood there, holding a bottle of food in his mouth — when I noticed I was doing the forceful exhale thing again.

I’ve only done that twice in my life: once in the plane, and once to keep from losing my mind with Max. Is parenting as extreme an experience as flying a stunt plane? Honestly, I think it is. It’s just so commonplace that we tend to forget.

The other day I was grilling in the backyard and Oliver didn’t understand that, unlike with the stove, the sides of the grill were hot as well as the top. Several times he came within inches of touching the burning metal, so, much to his dismay, I made him go inside.

About 10 minutes later I went in and sat him down to explain the importance of listening when I tell him something is dangerous.

“I’m sorry papa,” he said in his very smallest voice. “I don’t mean to do it.”

The second he said that, I started crying so fast it literally stung my tear ducts.

The volume on every interaction you have with your child is jacked up as high as it goes. So next time you’re chastising yourself for playing too many DVDs or losing your temper, do some deep breathing and remember that, as parents, we really are living on the edge. It may be an enormous, spherical edge with six billion people living on it, but we can’t forget that fact.