Today I would like to share the story of the time I grew a beard. Here is a picture of it:

The descision wasn’t premeditated. It started with just being too lazy to shave one day, and then another, and then these things grow momentum. Before I knew it, I had a full beard and was faking my own death and adopting a whole new persona.

The year was 2021. Another hot Atlanta summer was beginning, and Lily had just received a major award for her gymnastics work.

The two of us were on top of the world, that is, at Ace Hardware, and I was talking to my buddy there. You see, his eldest was in Lily’s swim class and his second was still in diapers. So, I asked him what the whole two kid thing was like. He replied, “Having one kid is a bit like having two. Having two is like having ten.”

A few weeks later, I got the call. It was time. We took Lily next door to the Greene’s house, a really nice older couple who basically served as bonus grandparents for Lily. Later, Lily’s best friend Addiline came and picker her up for her first sleepover and more fun than I’ve probably ever had in my life. Everything was going smoothly.

I knew something was amiss when Ghostbusters 2 came on the television in the hospital room. Alyssa had been in labor for some time, and to me it was an omen of grave significance. Clearly, some medeival Carpathian was attempting to possess the body of my unborn child, which, as I explained to the doctor, is why she was getting turned around all cattywompus. The medical staff agreed, and so they rushed Alyssa into an emergency C-section.

After the procedure effectively thwarted the ancient spectre, my newborn daughter was rushed to the neonatal intensive care unit as a precaution. As Alyssa was in no condition to move in her highly drugged, slightly disemboweled state, I accompanied the tiny one alone. As I stared at the little purple blob in the glass box, I began having flashbacks to the weeks Lily had spent in the NICU. So I did the only sensible thing.

I recited from memory the story “Dragons Love Tacos” through the glass to my newborn child.

Thankfully, Lydia caught her breath and only had to spend a couple hours in the box before being reuinted with her mommy. Exhausted, and having not had any food for over 24 hours because of several oversights in the hospital kitchen, I took my leave to procure a massive poke bowl. But the story doesn’t end there.

All told, it took 5 days before Alyssa and our newborn were able to come home. First Alyssa got postpartum preeclampsia, which always seemed to me like a contradition of terms. Then when that cleared Lydia got all yellow and jaundicy, which required her to sit under some weird blue tanning lights for a spell. But by the grace of God everything worked out fine and we got a healthy baby and a slightly worse for wear mommy home safe and sound.

Her name is Lydia

At first I was able to maintain a relatively normal shaving routine. After all, summer is hot, and beyond a few days of stubble it really becomes unbearable. By the start of football season, however, Alyssa was back at work, Lily was back at preschool, and my sideburns were mighty and disheveled.

You see, having the first kid involved a major identity change. I went from some guy who likes football, beer, and horror films to “Dad, part-time writer and full-time caregiver.” Certain behavior patterns no longer functioned in this dynamic, such as staying up to 3 a.m. drinking on the weekends. Baby Lily was still going to wake up at dawn, and dealing with that is no fun with zero sleep and a massive hangover. As big a change as this entailed, however, it was largely a mental struggle coupled with physical exhaustion.

The second child, on the other hand, creates a logistics nightmare. You simply cannot dedicate 100 percent of your attention simultaneously to two little chaos gremlins. During the first few weeks of Lydia’s life, the endless parade of family flying in helped keep the massive labor demands in check, but flying in help from out of state every other week is not a sustainable business model.

The biggest downside to our modern mode of living, where family becomes dispersed to the four winds, is that ultimately you end up on an island. With Alyssa working full-time and the nearest blood relative across State lines, that is exactly where I found myself.

As the weather cooled, the situation escalated. At first I tried delegating childcare tasks.

Unfortunately, the staff proved unreliable. We did have some friends, a few very good ones. Addiline’s mom was a stay-at-at home mom, and her dad and I were fast friends. They also had a second, about a year older than Lydia. I probably wouldn’t have made it through those days without someone to have five minutes of adult conversation with while our kids ran amok at some playground every now and then. As the only stay-at-home Dad I knew, I was finding myself increasingly isolated.

The previous year we had a major falling out with our core friend-group of people we had known for a decade. So outside of the one mutal aid pact and a few people several towns over that we saw on special occasions, we didn’t have a very robust social structure. That isn’t an easy thing to rebuild when you have a newborn.

What’s more, friends are not family. They aren’t stuck with you. You don’t feel the same about dumping your kids with them. Sometimes they leave.

The chronic back pain I had been dealing with every day since before Lydia was born didn’t help nor did the increased migraine frequency which sometimes accompanies the changing seasons. The side effects I endured one week in September when I tried a new migraine medicine were particularly trying.

You see, my old neurologist had left our network mid-year without anyone telling us, and after some intense arguments with insurance, we did manage to avoid paying some unreasonable fees, but at the cost of having to find a new neurologist. Of course with a new neurologist comes new drugs, and these drugs proved… unhelpful. I normally don’t get panic attacks because the grass looks oddly threatening. I did not return for a second vistit.

When a man has something to strive for, it is often surprising how much he can endure. Once Halloween was over and family costumes accomplished, however, all motivation to shave ended.

With the arrival of the annual November family illnesses, something had to give. That something, was shaving. Thus, the beard was born.

With the growing cold, the beard began to blossom. By Christmas morning, physical therapy may have failed, but the beard was glorious.

I learned something that winter. When life gets hard, men grow beards. I’m not entirely sure why, but it helps.

The beard and baby continued to grow through the winter until their christening. Behold them, in all their glory.

Sadly, circumstances would soon force me to shave the beard… but that’s a story for another day.