AND FROM ME?

Dear Spike:

It's 2:17 a.m. and, once again, I'm having trouble sleeping.

It has been this way since your mom told me about the test. I think I've only had one or two nights of legitimate, eight-or-more-hours, head-buried-in-the-pillow, snoring-like-a-drugged-gorilla sleep since then.

Mom, on the other hand, well, you'd think she lived among dwarves. She's been getting 10 or 12 hours a day lately. All the books say that's normal in the first weeks of pregnancy. I think she's storing up energy to give to you.

Your impending arrival has really only accentuated differences in our sleeping habits that already were prevalent.

Mom's a morning person — jumps out of bed and into the shower, out of the shower and into her closet, out of the closet and into the kitchen. Eggs. toast, cereal, grapefruit, or whatever is on the menu, and then she's out the door. For a walk. A yoga class. To do a little yard work. She's the most intense morning person I've ever met.

I stay up late — I think it's the quietness of the dark morning hours that I enjoy most — and prefer to pick up my sleep after the sun comes up, as your mom runs around the house playing the banjo and vacuuming the stairs.

I wonder, quite frequently, about what attributes you'll get from me and which you'll take from your mom.

I really hope you get her sleeping habits — it is a lot more conducive to a normal life if you sleep in the hours that normal people sleep and are awake during the hours that normal people are awake. I also hope you get her hair (you may note, in this photo of three generations of Spike ancestors, a serious lack of hair among the men. The women do much better, so if you're a girl you're probably going to be OK.)

You're definitely going to want her temperament. And her intelligence. And her wit. And that cute dimple on her cheek.

Her sense of style. Her smile. Her persistence. Her poise.

And from me?

Well...

There's...

Um...

I guess I can type pretty fast — if that's hereditary, you'll definitely want that. And my eyesight is better than your mom's, so I'm hoping you get that from me (you'll be wanting her hearing, though, I couldn't hear a train if it were running through our backyard.)

Other than that, I suppose I'd prefer if you got just about everything from your mother, her being so darn wonderful and all.

I will admit, however, that I will be looking for something — anything at all — that connects us. It could be your fingernails or the bump on the back of your head. It could be the way you sleep.

Just something I can recognize as having come from me.

Something good. Something we share.

Love,
dad