A Million, Billion, Trillion Tiny Feelings Pt. 19

Notes from a father's first pregnancy

November 23, 2017

Again, our home is full. Little boys and girls run around our legs and feet, their joyful shouts echo off our wood floors as we prepare the table for the Thanksgiving meal Emily and I are hosting.

Almost my entire family from my father’s side have flown in for the holiday, making trips from New York, Rhode Island, Boston, Richmond, and Tampa to our quiet little corner of Chapel Hill for the holiday.

It’s a constant chorus of noise. Plastic toys crack off the floor, a child yells instructions on how to play an invented game, bellies laughing, feet stomping, glasses clinking. The adults recount stories of our grandparents and their parents before them that we’ve all heard a hundred times before.

Everyone asks how they can help out, to which I reply, “You can keep drinking and keep eating.”

I open another bottle of wine, look around my home, absorb the din and think of the massive parties we used to have when I was a boy; how any Giants game or Fourth of July or passing birthday was reason for my mother’s family to gather. Twenty or thirty of us around a pool table topped by a plank of wood and covered in dozens of Italian dishes for a big Sunday dinner. How it wasn’t just the big holidays that brought us together. How little of a reason we needed back then. Of course, it was easier when we all lived in the same town. Or at least the same state.

“I want this all the time,” Emily whispers in my ear.

“Soon,” I say, reminding her of the plans of several of our friends and family to move to Chapel Hill. “Soon we’ll have Joe and Gloree and their kids nearby. Soon Pop will be here permanently. Soon we’ll have these every Sunday.”