Daphne and I told her parents that she was pregnant at Thanksgiving 2003, when we were visiting them in Florida. There was a lot of toasting and crying, and then we all went to bed. The next morning I woke to find a rat had gnawed through the power cord of the laptop I'm writing this on. Come spring, back in New York, we read parenting books. Daphne was due in July. Under the rubric 'advice to fathers', one said: 'Keep the nest tidy. An upset nest yields an upset mother - and baby. In the postpartum period seeing one dirty dish unglues Martha . . . TIDY is your memory word for the day . . . Feel like a servant and waiter? You are.' I also began reading about rats. Mature rats and newborn babies are approximately the same size, and the former make terrifyingly good reading for an expectant father.

LRB 17 March 2005 | PDF Download