Weighty, yet peaceful moment in time (or the calm before the storm?)

The two cribs waiting for mattresses, mattress covers and two little babies

       In my adult life I’ve never owned a weight scale, so I don’t know for sure what I weighed the day my wife interrupted my morning shower to tell me the heaviest news I’ve ever received. A pregnancy test she’d just taken came up positive.

       That was nearly four months ago. My best guess is I weighed about 230 pounds that day in early November, a couple days before the first snow storm hit Southern Minnesota (which now seems like eons ago, right?). That’s about the same weight my father carried for much of his adult life. He died at age 52, after years of diet and weight-related ailments. I’m 5 foot 8 ¾ inches tall. Like my father, I was not meant to carry 230 pounds.

       And so the news from my wife that morning hit me extra hard, like a cast-iron frying pan to the face. I had only weeks earlier turned 36, a man so content with his existence I’d never seriously considered having children. No need, I thought. I see 150 children a day, five days a week for nine months a year. Best job in the world. This job will be my baby, sans diaper rash.

       But what hit me so hard was the mathematics. My father lived to be 52. My father’s father lived to be 54, so there’s a pattern already started. If I die at the same age as my father, my children will be learning to drive without me. Some things are out of your control, such as cancer, which runs rampant in my family. Other things, though, can be controlled, like the types and amounts of foods I ingest and the exercise I partake in.

       The frying-pan-to-the-face-news in early November served as a needed wake-up call. If I want to increase my chances of being a successful parent (not sure what that even means) I better get my body in better shape before they arrive this summer. Yes, that’s right. I said THEY. The man who never envisioned himself a parent will be papa bear to a pair -- identical twin boys -- by early July.

        The pastor at the church I attended in high school once told me he wanted to be able to beat his son in a game of one-on-one basketball when his son turned 18. That thought hasn’t crossed my mind, but I would like to be able to teach my kids to do the things I loved to do (and have in recent years given up), things like slalom water skiing and downhill skiing, although I suppose they’ll want to barefoot and snowboard. I want to be able to walk 18 holes of golf using my push cart alongside the two of them carrying their clubs. Whether I beat them or not is inconsequential.

        So I started a blog to track my progress: www.onehundredthousandcalories.blogspot.com. While I haven’t written as much lately, I have logged some valuable information along the way, including but not limited to the number of calories I have parted ways with when comparing my 2011 self to my 2010 self. I originally envisioned the blog as a way to count how many calories I burned on the treadmill, but instead it’s made me more reflective and aware of what foods I shovel down.

       The school’s scale (I still don’t own one) on Tuesday morning said I was just a few ounces shy of 10 pounds shed since January, when a few teacher buddies and I started a weight loss challenge, which we’ve all agreed is less about the weight loss competition and more focused on each of our individual goals and the overall aspect of getting healthier. Our health insurance provider should be happy to hear this.

       Speaking of insurance, I should mention before I forget that it’s thanks to a friendly Albert Lea insurance salesman that I am an expectant father. Almost exactly nine years ago I received a call from this then-future insurance salesman letting me know he was in town for the night in the town I then called home. He asked if I wanted to meet up with him and a couple of his friends. That evening, with his help, I met the expectant mother of these identical twins. Neither she, nor I, nor the man responsible for she and I, knew we’d all someday live in Albert Lea. Thank you to you, Mr. Friendly Albert Lea Insurance Guy … and thank you to fate as well.

       There’s a lot of unrest in the world right now, over such weighty issues as democracy in the Middle East and about how to best use tax dollars in the debt-saddled U.S. I pay attention to the news. As a newspaper guy, keeping abreast of current events is a large part of my identity. It always will be.

       Yet despite the unrest surrounding me and some of the personal feelings I have about those on-going situations, I am personally more at peace than ever before. The looming birth of these twin boys and the resulting weight-loss effort seem to be having a calming effect on me. With the loss of a few pounds it seems I’ve also shed some unnecessary mental baggage.

       Just in time, I guess.