On Being a First Time Dad at 41

Wrigleyville Man is about to become Wrigleyville Dad.

At 41.

The guy who knows every bartender at his favorite pre-and-postgame Cubs hangouts. The guy who far too many people associate with dive bars, and Malort, and with good reason. The guy who, when his wife goes out of town, grabs a pizza and a couple of six packs and lives off that until she gets home.

That guy. Me. Crazy, right?

First time fatherhood is happening for me at a time when people I went to high school and college with are sending their kids off to school. When I told people we were trying to have a kid, one of my college friends asked me “Do you really want to be chasing around a toddler in your 40s?”

Well, what choice do I have? To put it mildly, I was nowhere near mature or financially stable enough to be responsible for a kid until this stage of my life. Some people grow up quickly, I chose to be Peter Pan for the first 20 years of my adult life, chasing career butterflies and indulging my most hedonistic impulses at seemingly every single turn.

This is something we planned, something we wanted very badly, something we struggled with, something we didn’t take for granted would ever happen.

We finally felt comfortable announcing my wife’s pregnancy at the 20 week mark, once we had the anatomy scan and everything looked alright. After two miscarriages over the past year, it was nothing short of a relief to be able to start telling the world our little secret.

It also made the whole thing seem a lot more real. Real in that my life is about to change in so many ways.

No more taking off work spontaneously to go to a Cubs game because it’s nice outside. No more staying in bed as late as we’d like basking in pure, blissful silence.

Not as much time spent in bars, because I do not want my kid seeing me as someone who parties too much. No more spontaneous weekend trips just because. No more any number of other quasi-reckless habits that I’ve developed over the past 12 years of living in Chicago, living out the life I dreamt of in my youth.

And you know what? I can’t wait.

I had 20 solid years of living for myself as an adult. I ran marathons, partied like it was my job, raised tens of thousands of dollars for charity, went to far more Cubs games than I ever expected, traveled, tried different careers, succeeded, failed.

I lived the absolute hell out of my life. And now I’m ready to grow up.

I’m ready for sleepless nights rocking my kid to sleep. I’m ready to take them to see the sunrise over Lake Michigan because it reminds me of their grandmother, who passed away nearly ten years before they are going to be born.

I’m ready to teach my kid to love Chicago the way that I do, to ride the L, and try things that challenge them. I’m ready to teach my kid that not everyone has it as good as they’re going to have it and to stand up for people who don’t enjoy the kinds of freedoms that we do. I’m ready to teach my kid to be kind to others, to treat everyone else exactly how they’d want to be treated.

I’m ready to watch my wife be the role model that she was seemingly born to be, a successful executive who doesn’t take crap from anyone, and to become the best mom that this kid could have ever asked for.

Becoming a first time dad at 41 is going to be an absolute shock to the system. My life is going to change in ways that I’m not sure I even know about. But one thing is for sure — I’m ready.