The story of childbirth is always miraculous. It ends with a happy deus ex machina. All the anticipation and suffering lead to a crescendo of pure bliss, instant agape and personal transformations for both mom and dad.

Don't trust absolutes. I never do, but for some reason, this time around, I did.

It's not that parenthood doesn't reward us with these things in some measure, but people often remember things incorrectly. More accurately, people remember things in fairy tale black-and-white.

The terrible things that happen to us are recalled as total nightmares without the moments of hope and reversal that were with us at the time. And the blessings are recalled as such: pure and unmixed.

Genevra and I--I recently realized--both despise sugar-coating. While we're both very diplomatic people, (and at times I've been a total coward when trapped between lying and hurting someone's feelings), we both endeavor to infuse our lives with as much honesty as possible. It's no wonder that our wedding ceremony was laced with this kind of honesty. And it's no wonder that we met while working with the Neo-Futurists, a company with the same impossible mission.

So it's in that spirit that I share my perspective with you. (And I'm sure many people will disagree with me, but I feel like writing in objective absolutes, which as I said you should never trust...and for the same reasons, you should never trust Libertarians.)

The explosion of love and absolute attachment doesn't magically appear. Your baby--cute, helpless and abjectly cuddlesome--is a stranger. Her needs are a mystery. Love, no matter what life-event it's born from, is never handed to us. Opportunities for growth and love are presented to us, and so if you're open to it, your heart will grow. And if you're out of your mind, you'll leave your baby on a doorstep.

I saw a dharma talk once and while I can't remember this Zen master's name, I remember he was also a gestalt therapist. Go figure. Anyway, the thing I remember most about his talk was that he referenced all the many stories of enlightenment that pepper Zen Buddhist teachings. You almost always hear about someone who, in one single moment, achieved enlightenment. (Won Hyo achieved this understanding upon puking his guts out.) But in reality, the Zen master said, we tend to experience many "tiny enlightenments" throughout our lives that accumulate into something amazing, often upon retrospect.

And maybe, if one day I'd been told I was enlightened, it would be easy for me to look back on my life and wonder when exactly it happened.

I have a daughter. Her name is Ariana Bayiates. We call her Ari. She's almost six months old.

When she was born, I was pretty giddy but also tired. I probably wondered more about what Genevra was feeling having gone through all that. I also wondered if I was feeling enough love. I waited for what everyone told me about--that ray of love that would knock me over and change me for good. I secretly hoped that there wasn't something wrong with me.

My love for her continues to grow and I feel it when we make eye-contact more often than when I'm watching her--though I do love to watch her. She's a great Zen master, this girl. The lesson that she likes to teach me over and over again, is that she loves me best without artifice. She likes Daddy the Clown, but she loves Daddy as he is, the man with the beard who wonders what he should do next. She smiles widest when I smile at her with my eyes, when in an unguarded moment, I realize how much I've grown to love her. And it makes my heart hurt, our smiling together.

The other day I was waiting for my wife in a store. I had Ari with me in a stroller, facing me. But I watched for my wife somewhat impatiently. Ari made a noise. Just a small peep. In that one moment, I remembered that I was with my daughter, that I wasn't waiting at all. Waiting is for weenies. There's no such thing as waiting. All the time, in every moment, we're living, not waiting. Thanks, Ari.

I have a hard time with that one. I'm a weenie. I have a way to go. Six months isn't a long time.

Sometimes I get frustrated, and frustration breeds anger in some measure. Anger leads to a hardening of the heart. In extreme cases, anger leads people to become so hardened against others, it can dehumanize them, even making murder possible.

A slight frustration (on the tamest end of that spectrum, obviously) can still lead me to forget that I'm with my daughter. I can feel that rather than spending time rocking my sleepless baby to sleep, I'm instead not where I want to be. I'm not writing. I'm not working on the house. I'm not meditating. I'm stuck somewhere, waiting.

I've had moments, however, when that frustration melts away and underneath it I see myself at three years old, dressed in homemade pajamas, walking from door to door in my troubled family's home late at night, finally reaching my brother's door and telling him "everyone's closing their doors on me." Instead of sitting up and reading, Ed would take me in and play with me until I got sleepy.

I see myself, my entire family, through the 70's and 80's. Each of us struggling to be noticed in our own ways. When I remember this, I soften and vow to make hers a different kind of childhood.

No one believes that good parenting is handed to us, and that's true. It is as hard as you think. But many believe that love is handed to us. It's not. Something much more wonderful happens. Instead of being drawn up to heaven by the hands of God, we're given the opportunity to climb there ourselves.

What would you rather?

One day, I'll look back on this young woman's life and remember it as the deliverance of a blessing--a miraculous day when everything changed.

And that's okay, too.