“When my wife first told me that she was pregnant, I couldn’t...

“When my wife first told me that she was pregnant, I couldn’t sit down.  I wanted to rearrange the furniture or something.  There was this urgency.  Like I should be doing more.  My daughter is eleven months old now, and the feeling hasn’t gone away.  Everything seems so consequential.  I’ve been thinking about everything from her point of view.  The memories she’ll have in the future are going to be based on the decisions I make now.  I especially worry about space.  We live in a tiny apartment, and she’s got this little 5x5 piece of carpet that she plays on. Today she walked for the first time, using her little pushcart thing.  But she can only walk four feet before she hits a wall and has to turn around.  And I don’t ever want her to feel limited or boxed in.  But we looked at new apartments recently, and everything we can afford is so small.  So I need to focus.  I need to learn more.  I need to get a promotion.  Because I don’t ever want her to have an awareness of being poor.  Or any kind of worry at all.  I just want everything to feel natural, so she can prioritize her own life and her own feelings.”