There is within me this horribly perverse desire to hoard away little minutes here and thither for my own squandering. Fatherhood robs you of your selfishness, and I want it back. I linger fondly over memories of gross self indulgence, filling my belly with late night television and sleeping until noon after noon. There were these rare but ghastly glimpses into a future filled with stale potato chips and beer cans stacked to the ceiling and dripping disorder across the room, and the vague notion of eternity in this foul stench of a vision; but these were easily squashed by the audacity of self import.

The child allows no other in his unruly room within your heart. No space exists for self, and though his departure was no doubt timely and a salvation of many colors, the idea of self sometimes pines for itself in the quiet moments between tasks. That the house is full of diapers stacked to ceilings and scattered books and toys cover the couch and floor matters little to the faint horrors of former visions. The child must be satisfied and his thirst is greater than any of my former selves.

The joy then emerges quite unexpectedly, as we feed his unquenchable desires with our little loves–their unquenchability fuels my purpose in ways no other self ever afforded; and to love him is to know love (a little).

How then to ferret away a moment for myself?