Reinvention

Reinvention (noun): the action or process through which something is changed so much that it appears to be entirely new.

The porcelain rim of the sink is cold beneath my palms - and the sound of the open faucet has faded, though it remains. I am in the hall bathroom. It’s Saturday. 

Another clatter of wooden toys beyond the door is followed by the thunderous little steps of my toddler. I can hear her mother too. Her love - and her exhaustion. The steam now rising from the water doesn’t register to me, for my eyes are locked upon the face in the mirror staring back at me - foreign, and conflicted. My reflection. My reinvention. 

I swallow back my revulsion. That gut wrenching doubt. The anger. The shame. I swallow it back into the pit of my stomach where it coils into knots. I see those eyes and know, with great pain, that he is not well. He is not sick - but dying. A caterpillar trapped in the silken walls of a safe home. Melting. Squirming. And dying. Here I am. Metamorphosizing.

The door thuds against its own latch. “Dada.” Thud. “DADA!” A tiny hand. A battering ram.

I can hear my wife there, out atop her raft in the sea of her own questions. “Dada will be out in just a minute, Gooby. Right, Dada?”

“Yep!” I say. “Just one more moment.” I meet my own eyes once more. Still foreign - but now bright. Alive. Flickered into life like the great eyes of the Iron Giant. An Iron Giant.

Her

Iron

Giant.

Our soap is scented with Fraser Fir. Our bathmat is white, with tassels. We did not spend enough money on our vanity. I grit my teeth. It was true - I had fallen prey to the stories I had told myself. That our society had told me. I had believed that these changes would come easy to me. That I would achieve it quickly. But the truth is far harder to embrace.

A reinvention is a great and terrible trial. It is marked by grief. It is wrought with death and transformation. It is the setting aside of great swathes of beloved treasures in hopes of conquering what it is you must become. What you MUST become. For yourself - your spouse - your children. Your God. A reinvention is years. Decades. It is time - and it is grace.

I turn off the water. I dry my hands. Our hand towel is new. Soft. I take a deep breath. I have not failed them. “Dada!” Thud. I am melted. Molten. Changing. Striving. Growing. Stretching. Cracking. And reforming. I am not a reinvention. I am reinventing. I am not broken, but transfiguring. My wife knows. Sometimes I worry that she’s growing her wings faster than I. But she knows. We are building.

I grab the doorknob. Dad. Struggling, but hopeful. Determined. Present.

I open the door and crouch down to sweep my daughter into my arms. I smell her warmth. I feel her soft velvety sweater and the little huff of air from her lungs as I bounce her into the crook of my arm. I look into her eyes. 

“Snack.”

“I can get you a snack.” I reply. “What would you like?”