I said I wouldn’t tell cute stories about the kids. But I never promised not to post videos. Actually I’ve been summertime slacking off and not focusing so much on writing. I am, spiritually, a proud torchbearer for Gen X slackers at heart. Not that I’m making excuses. As my dear friend Jill reminded me, I’m a few short weeks into not working after 20 straight years of employment, punctuated by double-time in graduate school and patching ceilings.
Back to the video. This was taken a couple of days ago on a rainy retro afternoon spent introducing music from my youth to the kids. Although in truth anything from before the kids were born I now classify as my youth, as they are catapulting me into middle age faster than our son can fill a diaper genie. Our daughter loves to replay the “silly daddy” video, and I’m struck by the abundance of family footage she’ll always have, compared to the three photos and one audio file we have of the donor. Twenty-first century technology has allowed us to capture moments that transport into the iCloud while we make a cup of tea, then share with family, Facebook or a blog in a couple more clicks of the phone. And if we put any effort into weeding, organizing and preserving footage (nerdy librarian reference) then our kids will have an unbelievably rich archive of family life and love.
Fantastic technological progress has also given us IVF, ICSI and embryo freezing, but for donor-conceived families the footage remains starkly lopsided. Most of my posts seem to end with a sentence beginning with “hopefully”, because I don’t know what the hell is going to happen, but, hopefully, the kids will see that we were, and are, just a normal family with a silly daddy who loves them.
That is beyond adorable.