For those who don’t know me, allow me to introduce myself. I am the Closer. For those of you who are unfamiliar with baseball or more likely just don’t carry the XY chromosome match, let me define “the Closer.” The Closer is an official pitching role in major league baseball for the person who finishes out the game. The starting pitcher carries 2/3 or more of the the baseball game and then the Closer finishes the game strong for an inning or two. This happens for several reasons but the most important one is that the starting pitcher just doesn’t have the ability to make it through the whole game.
Now, let’s stretch this baseball metaphor over into the home front. My wife is the starting pitcher who deals with 2/3 or more of the day and I come in at the end to finish strong.
When 7pm arrives, it is my time to shine. Bath, bottle and bed are my domain and it looks something like the following. Bath time includes pumping up the iTunes on the computer and looking for some fitting tunes to fit the evening. It could be Lupe Fiasco one night or Ingrid Michaelson the next. It just depends on my daughter’s mood (also mine- I mean seriously, she is a baby. Now is the time to train her to love good music. And by good music, I mean the music that Dad likes.)
Then we move to the IKEA rocking chair where my daughter chugs her nighttime bottle, which immediately worries me about her chugging propensity, which leads me to fret about her sneaking out to keg parties in High School, which leads me to consider purchasing a shotgun for the purpose of scaring her into a teetotaling goody-two-shoes existence but that is a conversation for another day. Finally, Halle gets into her crib and we do two things together. I tell her she is a princess and that she is my favorite girl in the whole wide world (this statement will stay intact until the day when/if we might have another daughter.) Finally, we pray a prayer of thanksgiving for the day that has passed and a prayer of anticipation for what God has next. The whole process of being a closer is about 45 minutes. And I love every minute of it!
I love being the Closer for many reasons: 1)I enjoy having some special one on one time 2) My wife deserves some time to decompress 3) Most importantly, I want to be the Closer for the rest of my daughter’s life. I, of course, do not mean that I hope to bathe and give her a bottle in 2020 but rather I want to be the one that helps her finish strong at every age. When she gets pushed on the playground when she is 11, I want to help her process it. When a sub-human-turd of a teenage boy breaks her heart, I will be excited to show her the aforementioned shotgun that I purchased and subsequently assure her that no one hurts my princess. When she is home from college for a summer break and she is uncertain of what she should do and where she should go, I will be there to close out her day and offer kind words of encouragement.
I am the Closer for a lot of reasons but the main one is that I want to earn the right to be the Closer for the rest of her life, so I am starting now.
