The court granted Farrow temporary guardianship, and this healthy, beautiful baby boy is a stage 10 clinger.
And for some damn reason, he’s clinging to me.
At 4 a.m. in my childhood bedroom, I’m cradling a fussy baby against my chest and walking from my comic book rack over to the nightstand. The movement lulling the four-month-old back to sleep. I step around the sunken air mattress that we’ve abandoned re-inflating.
Farrow tried, and the baby acted like we chucked him into monster-infested waters. He doesn’t know it yet, but unless you fuck with my family, you’re pretty much safe from being shark bait.
You, the world, have zero clue about the baby and our new setup. It’s only Night 2. And it’s not every day a baby is dropped on your doorstep while you’re planning a wedding—a wedding that’s mentioned nightly on entertainment news, while paparazzi are harassing you for details.
Welcome to my strange life.
Directed by Unknown Forces. Maybe God. I’m not that religious, but I’d like to think that this is supposed to happen the way it’s happening.
It makes me a bit less apprehensive.
And it’s hard not to smile when I’m holding this little soft thing that smells like baby powder and citrus, even after washing him with fragrance-free Hale Co. baby soap.
I pace to the desk, the graphic novel Daytripper by Gabriel Ba and Fabio Moon buried underneath a pack of wipes and diapers. The baby curls his tiny fists against my bare chest. Settling down.
I rub his back. I can’t imagine what he’s been through the first four-months of life. It’s honestly a miracle that he’s not rejecting both of us.
Just one of us.
“Hand him over.” Farrow rests coolly against the nightstand and makes a come-hither motion. “You can’t carry him around for decades, wolf scout.”
Sounds like a challenge.
I open my mouth to respond. But he’s a full-fledged distraction to my brain that loves how he’s doing absolutely nothing.
That’s right. Farrow is just annoyingly at ease, his leisurely state almost infectious.
I drink in his shirtless torso: gorgeous gray-scale tattoos sprawled across his body and the colorful sparrows and swallows throughout. I skim higher, to his barbell nipple piercing.
Higher, to his growing smile.
To his recently dyed hair. Back to bleach-white, which contrasts his brown eyebrows that rise at me. “You want a picture?”
“Of the wall, sure.”
He shakes his head with a half-smile, then makes the come hither gesture again. “Come on.”
“You’re positive you want to hold him?” I lower my voice as the baby stretches a tiny arm and smacks his lips. “He’s been here less than 48-hours, and you’ve already been peed and spit up on. There’s only one more box to tick off, man, and I don’t know if you can handle projectile poop.”
“I can handle some baby shit,” Farrow says, his eyes narrowing on my smile. “You’re loving this.”
I’m better than Farrow at plenty of things. But I recognize he has me beat in a lot of areas too. So I can’t deny that having miles on him in the kid department feels pretty damn good.
Especially since he was a Med-Peds first-year intern before quitting his residency. Peds standing for pediatrics.
But so far, I’ve excelled more than him.
Changing diapers, bottle-feeding and burping an infant—I didn’t even need to use YouTube or phone a friend. I’m the big older brother to a sister almost ten-years younger than me. Not to mention all the other kids in my family.
It taught me a ton.
“I’m soaking it in,” I admit.
Gloating about my knowledge lightens the situation. The situation being that the baby loves me too much.
He’s terrified of not being in my arms. It doesn’t matter if I pass him over to Farrow or place him in the crib. His reaction is the same. Titanic tears and banshee wails.
And I get that Farrow is worried I’m going to be a walking zombie if I take on the full load of this kid. He didn’t accept the guardianship just to saddle me with all the weight.
“We can try again,” I tell Farrow on my way towards him. Slowly, I peel the baby off my chest. His tiny hand grips my thumb. Clinging.
Farrow stands fully and takes the baby with tender, gentle force. As soon as he’s in my fiancé’s arms, he expels the highest, mightiest cry.
Jesus.
He has some epic lungs on him. “Maybe he’ll be a swimmer,” I say, positive thinking and all that.
Farrow tucks the fussing baby to his tattooed chest. Just like I had him against mine. To the baby, he whispers, “Wolf scout thinks you’ll be a swimmer, little man.”
I smile.
Despite his easygoing nature, Farrow wears this intense concentration. He sweeps his hand soothingly over the baby’s back and sways melodically from side to side.
I don’t know who I’m smiling at anymore. Farrow, or Farrow holding the baby, or just the baby—let’s go with just the baby.