To Have a Child Late in Life Is a Joyful Act Pregnant With Sadness

February 11, 2026

Dear Sophia,

I know I shouldn’t anthropomorphize you, but sometimes I think you are almost like a human and you know very well that you are on the changing table, and you wait until I finish tickling your belly with the cool wet cleaning cloth I use to get you to pee while the diaper is still mostly on you and you wait until I have even taken away your dirty diaper before replacing it with a fresh one before you produce several fountains of new urine and even squirt out some belated poop. I know I shouldn’t anthropomorphize you but in these moments you seem like nothing so much as an assassin.

Then there is your behavior at the nipple. You pop on, and off, on, and off, head butt, a hand hitting your mom in the face, a refusal to sleep, on, off, headbutt.

“We do not negotiate with terrorists,” your mother tells you.

Humankind’s first pleasure, and, we can definitively say, man’s first reason for smiling, is the fart.

Push it out, baby. There’s no way out but through.

You sneeze. My hand is wet. You need to learn to cover your mouth! I cry.

* * *

A thought I’ve had lately. I think it’s one of the main messages underlying the Prologue I wrote, but I didn’t put it in there in so many words: forgive me.

To have a child late in life is a joyful act pregnant with sadness.

Forgive me for giving you a likelihood of less time with your father, and less time seeing your mother together with her husband.