Seriously, 20 cops in uniform and me waiting for the #66 at Chicago and Larrabee.

You have to take my word for it, I know. There was really no way to get a photo, though. I mean, how do you ask 20 cops to pose for a random photo?

I couldn’t just stand idly by and not acknowledge that I’m waiting for a bus with 20 cops. I turned to a cluster of five and suggested, “I certainly do feel safe right now.”

One of them responded, “Gimmie your wallet!”

We all laughed.

Bus arrived 10 minutes or so later and stopped right in front of me. I squeezed on first. The bus was too crowded for 20 cops, so they decided to walk.

As the bus drove away, a teenager—why wasn’t he in school?—looked at this swarm of cops and whispered to himself, “What happened?”

Nothing, kid. Nothing happened.

The photo below was taken last Saturday. It sums up just about everything that makes me happy right now. In fact, it so perfectly captures what makes my life worth living, I now consider this photo quantitatively and qualitatively to be the greatest photo of me ever taken.

1. I’m holding my son.
2. My son is dressed like a Star Wars character that existed in the original trilogy and isn’t an Ewok.
3. I don’t look nearly as gray, bald and old as I actually am.
4. My wife is taking the photo.
5. My wife is using an Apple product to take the photo. (As much as I try to slough it off, I truly am a fanboy.)
6. It’s the weekend of Halloween, which takes on such a different and completely awesome vibe when you have a kid.
7. I’m in a sausage shop.

There’s an election tomorrow that threatens to undo a lot of great work done in the past two years, I’m concerned daily that my career path is nearing a complete derailment, and the realities of the economy give my wife and me a lot of worry. But I take one look at this photo and I know that none of that really matters, does it?

Dear Oliver:

By the time you are able to read this, you may actually be sick of hearing me say that the day you were born was the happiest day of my life. On March 21, 2010, your mother’s water broke at 6 am, and at 7:31 pm that night, you turned our marriage into a family. You may look completely different now, but at the time, you looked exactly like me when I was born, which is to say you look exactly like your Grandaddy Dave, my father.

Your mother is the strongest woman you will ever know, and don’t you forget it! I always knew that your mother is amazing and capable of doing damn near anything; I had no idea what that really meant until you were born. The work to push you out, the sleepless nights keeping you fed—you really are lucky that she is your mom.

And I’d like to think that you’re lucky to have me as a dad. I was scared silly that you were coming into my life. In these past six weeks, you’ve shown me that, yeah, I was right to be scared. Looking back on your 39 weeks of gestation, I realize that not being scared would have made me less able to change your diapers, to rock you to sleep and to hold you — to love you. You’ll understand one day.

Your mother and I love you more than ourselves. That’s not to say we won’t make mistakes. We will both make poor choices, and in some cases, our reflexes will get the best of us. That doesn’t mean we don’t love you. On the contrary; it simply means we’re humans. Humans that love you unconditionally.

I’m not going to use this blog post — will you even know what a “blog post” is? — to try and impart some wisdom about life. When you have questions, we will answer them. When you make decisions about the world, we’ll support you. We want to create a world for you where you feel safe to make your own wisdom. We’ll teach you to treat others with respect, and that’s all we can ask of ourselves now.

But I will use this opportunity to tell you about the first gift I bought you. Once we found out that you would be a boy, I bought you a domain name. OliverGuthrie.com is yours and no one can take it away from you. (Unless you forget to pay for it after your 18th birthday — but will you even know what a “domain name” is in 18 years?) Until then, I hope you won’t mind that your mother and I are borrowing your domain name to post photos of you. You’re a good looking kid; we don’t want to be selfish with those good looks.

I know you’re only six weeks old, but you’ve done more to change my life than anything else has. I’ve told anyone willing to listen that life seems easier now, an odd thing to say with an infant in the house in need of constant attention, certainly. Yet, every decision I make from now on will affect your life, not just my own. Having that kind of responsibility makes me feel humble. Everything is about you now, and to me, that just seems easier than the alternative.

I love you, and your mother loves you. And if this internet-thing is still around in 15 years, I apologize that this blog post will embarass you in high school.

Good luck and Godspeed,
Dad