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Hey Dad,

No baby yet. Tomorrow is the official due date, but we're hoping that any minute the process will begin. In fact, I'm trying real hard not to ask my wife every time I pass her in the house, "Anything happening?"

I guess it will come when it comes. In the meantime, we've been getting ready. Most of the little projects to get done are checked off my wife's list, and I spent a good chunk of yesterday helping clean the house so it will be nice and tidy when the baby gets here.

It was spotless when I hit the hay, but I just know the kids will "unspotless" it within 20 minutes of waking up.

While I was vacuuming, I noticed the little bureau in the entry. Not that I hadn't noticed it before, but I had forgotten that I'd have some updating to do to it in a few days. You see, the names of all our children are scratched into its distressed finish.

I'm not sure why I carved the first name into the bureau, but in a few days, there will be another one to add.

As I thought about the bureau, I was also reminded about the glass birds sitting on our bedroom windowsill. Actually, they look more like 2" blobs of glass (red for girls/blue for boys) but they represent each of our children. When the sun shines through the window, they sparkle … and I smile when I see them.

It's funny—the traditions dads have to commemorate the birth of a new child. My friend Bob told me last weekend that he buys a special pocketknife, has the hospital sterilize it, and then uses it to cut the umbilical cord. Then he engraves it with the child's name and birth date and boxes it away until the day they get married. Cool.

That's what becoming a dad does to a guy. He goes from being a non-emotional, practical human being to a man who gets a lump in his throat the first time his child calls him "dad," walks three tottering steps, or announces loudly in a packed restaurant, "Daddy, I went poopy!"

That's why Bob does the pocketknife thing, why my brother-in-law purchases his wife a diamond to commemorate each birth, and why I scratch names in an old bureau. That's FATHER POWER. And, Dad, you got the POWER.

By the way, if you have a tradition to mark the birth of a child, tell me about it. I'd love to share with the rest of the dads. Until then, I'll keep you posted.

Still waiting,

© 2006 Todd Wilson. Used by permission.

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