What would Rami do?
rambling about my son
Exactly 40 days ago, Rami Peter Le Kumar was born. And he is an absolute legend. I already know he is going to be an incredible person who will be funnier, cooler, kinder, braver than Kathy and me combined. And even if he’s not – that’s fine. He will be himself which is absolutely more than enough. It’s crazy that he’s only 40 days old. He is going to see so much in his life that I can’t even begin to imagine. He’s going to see the world change immeasurably and take an active role in it. After all, the world would not be the same if he weren’t in it.
The week of his birth I went to Sugarfish twice to grab sushi for Kathy. The second time, I had basically not slept, my hair looked insane, and I was dressed quite poorly. I remember seeing all these normal people dressed well and having a great time eating a nice lunch. A week earlier, I would have felt self-conscious about how out of place and disheveled I looked, but at that moment it just felt… unreal? Like everyone else was part of a fever dream because they weren’t in the secret container of Kathy, me, and Rami inside our house. How could all these people be living normally and just enjoying their lunch and not realize that the whole world was different? Everything had changed. I kind of expected everyone else to know by now.
Some of my personal priorities turned out to have been built on sand. Things I told myself I cared about just a week before, like trying to put in effort to lose a bit more weight, seemed so silly now. Other things suddenly became more important. I believe that people almost always know what the right thing to do is in a particular situation. And once it is at the top of their mind and they are fully aware of it at an embodied level, almost everyone does the right thing. I have found that having a kid really helped clarify things in that sense, as the space of priorities narrowed & I also now find it easier to be non-judgmentally aware, perhaps because it is easier to immediately step outside myself through Rami. In my view these are likely the main reasons why having children tends to make people become “more adult.” The right thing to do feels more obvious.
For example, I previously have been avoidant of having difficult conversations or bringing up things that bother me to others, especially family members, and instead have opted to let things fade/improve with time. My threshold for ‘difficult’ conversations has been higher than I know it should have been, but it’s been easy to ignore. Now, those kinds of situations stick at the top of my awareness and I feel more of a moral obligation to address them up front, because it is what I would want Rami to do. In fact, I have started using “what would Rami do?” internally as a kind of mental shorthand for trying to be the best version of myself.
Sitting next to him, I feel immense gratitude for him being here and sleeping next to me. I feel immense gratitude for Kathy for going through a real roller coaster of a pregnancy, ending with an extremely stressful birth, to bring him into this world. It still blows my mind that she made him. I feel grateful that I now get to feel a rough approximation now of what Kathy felt during pregnancy of getting to keep him alive and well.
I also feel more of a desire to do something worthwhile with my time. Interestingly, that phrase would occasionally result in some existential anxiety or negative feelings during the month or so before his birth, but now it feels more positive and aspirational. I want to be a good role model for him and ideally even involve him in whatever work I do. The 8 months of my sabbatical before his birth were great for de-stressing and recovering from some emotional burnout I had from my last job. But I feel ready to build something, and additionally more centered and present now that Rami is here. Honestly it is impossible not to be present with him because he is fully present at all times. It’s not only that his needs are pressing, but they are all-consuming in a.. good way? I am jealous of his ability to allow an emotion to fully take over and to express it fully. From turning red from crying due to a diaper change to reflex smiling because he’s nestled in my arms, all within a minute. Incredible. Underneath is a level of emotional presence and fluidity I aspire to achieve one day. It’s quite beautiful that he comes out of the womb already an expert, whereas I likely will need to unlearn things to get there.
But I feel I have made progress. In many ways, the entire process of the pregnancy and birth haven’t given me much choice. Late last year, I thought I had processed some of the emotions around having a kid due to a somewhat tumultuous start to the pregnancy. Now I know I had only experienced something like 1%. I of course did not foresee the various complications that would come up during the birth process itself and how scary and stressful that would be. It was the first time I have been afraid for Kathy’s life. Giving birth is in a lot of ways gambling the mother’s life for the life of the baby. And it underscores how little control we all ultimately have in things that really matter to us. Perhaps it is impossible for something to truly, intimately matter to us if we have complete control over it. Either way, I am grateful everything turned out well and we now get to have a small human being who has no control over his body or environment rely on us for everything. It has made it clear that we all enter this life fully dependent on others and exit it the same way. In the middle we pretend we are independent for a short while.
A few days after Rami was born I had the realization that not only did what I feel for him exactly match what I feel for Kathy, but that the love I had for him wasn’t just an addition to what I felt for Kathy, it was somehow a multiplication. My heart is full.
It took me quite a while to write this. I wrote a couple draft outlines trying to structure it as a narrative which made coherent sense and had clear points. None of that felt right so I scrapped it. Instead, I ended up just weaving together snippets from my ~daily 10 minute free writing practice. This feels much more real – the jumbled incoherence matches how discontinuous of a moment this is in my life.