What’s My Name?
I’ve had a bunch of names over the course of my life other than Jarrett Carter. For a while, I went heavily by ‘son,’ ‘brother’ and ‘cousin.’
But as I moved up in age, the time around my immediate family became less frequent and the names became a little more distant. ‘Baby’ and ‘sweetheart’ became the regular rotation.
I still go by each of these names, but now I’m focusing on the two names I like best. ‘Husband’ and soon, ‘Daddy.’
Two things that make this critical to me in the next 25 days when the baby is supposed to arrive. A pretty emotional argument last night with my wife led to me doing some research today. Half soul-searching, a quarter curiosity, and a quarter effort to waste my lunch break at work. I looked up some stuff on ADHD; not spurred by an emotional jab placed by my wife during our argument, but out of some well-meaning questions that she has long been searching to answer.
“Why is it so hard for you to listen?”
“I don’t understand why it seems so difficult for you remember the things we need to have done around the house.”
We have long been brawling about my lack of intuition and care when it comes to household chores. It’s not that I’m lazy, but I can be easily distracted. By television, by phone calls, by anything not household chores related. But last night was different; maybe it was her hormones, maybe it was the beer I was drinking. But last night, for the first time, I felt her pain.
I felt how painful it would have been for her to birth a child and try to balance the baby with a fully-grown functioning baby for a spouse. I could hear the anguish she was feeling, the threat of loneliness in household maintenance while shouldering the great burden of pregnancy. I could visualize that, five or ten years down the road, this was something that could significantly impact our marriage.
So I managed to convince her that I was sincere in my apologies, and diligent in my pledge to change. I’d always been sincere and diligent, but would always manage to slip back into the same kind of behavior.
So today, I Googled my bad habits. Easily distracted. Lack of attention to detail. Trouble listening. Bouncing between tasks and assignments.
And this is what I came up with.
Yeah, not something you want to find that you may be struggling with as a 28-year-old man.
So now I have to redefine what my names mean to me. They now mean making lists. Being cognizant of distractions and removing them before getting started on a task. I haven’t seen a doctor yet, but considering that these are very real obstacles to living a healthy and happy life, and traits that may pass on to my child in spite of the anal retentive genes the child will inherit from its mother, it’s something I gotta throw in the bag real quick.
Husband and Daddy. Obviously, you can’t have two more important names in this lifetime. So I can’t make up my mind about if I’m relieved to find out that I may have ADHD, or if I should be more nervous about what my child and wife may have to put up with out of scatterbrained dad?
Either way, these are names I wasn’t born into. These are names I took on. And if it takes post-it notes, pop up messages on my Blackberry, and a slew of reminders and motivational phrases, I have to wear these names well from now on.
