“Uh, thanks,” he replied, still sounding confused.
I switched the subject, asking, “So, how far along is she?”
His voice dropped as he answered, “A couple of months. She just told me today.”
“Damn. Are you two keeping it?”
“Yeah,” he said, the weight of that decision heavy in his voice.
“How do you feel about that?” I asked.
He paused before admitting, “I’m scared, Art. How do I raise a kid? I still live like one. I’m not like you. Josh and Ally are lucky to have a dad like you. What’s my kid going to think of me?”
I remembered having the same fears when Paige was pregnant.
“Lance, stop comparing yourself to me. That’s the mistake I always made with you. Believe it or not, I’ve always been jealous of you.”
He gasped in surprise. “Stop nonsensing me, Art. What the hell are you jealous of? You’ve got your crap together, especially now that you’ve lost all that weight.”
I chuckled at the irony. “That’s just it, Lance. Neither of us should be jealous of the other. I’m working on fixing my insecurities. Why can’t you? If you want to be responsible, then be responsible. If you want to be a good dad, learn how to be one.”
“That’s easy for you to say,” he grumbled.
“You’re right. It is easy to say, but it takes work. And if anyone can do it, you can. You’re one of the strongest people I know. I’d bet on you any day.”
“Really?” he asked, genuinely surprised.
“Absolutely.”
And I meant it. Lance might have been irresponsible at times, but I always believed he’d outgrow it. And I had a feeling the time was now. We talked for two more hours, and the more we did, the more I believed he’d be a great dad.
He wasn’t handling the situation like everything else. He was worried, thinking about how his actions would affect his child. Isn’t that what all good fathers do? I shared my own parenting failures, hoping it would make him feel less alone.
Some stories made us laugh, others were cautionary tales. I joked that fate would probably give him a girl as karma, and he laughed at that. I promised to be there for him in whatever way he needed, and I meant it. By the time we hung up, the sun was rising.
Something had shifted in me during that conversation. I grew up a little. I wasn’t jealous of my brother anymore. It wasn’t because I realized he was as jealous of me as I was of him.
It was because I started seeing myself differently. I was the responsible one, the smart one. Those were qualities I should have been proud of. They were my 80%, and I didn’t need the other 20%.
I was fine just the way I was. I got up and prepared for work feeling better than I had in a long time. Life moved at a steady pace after that. Weeks turned into months, and my outlook brightened.
The one downside was that Jerry felt like I didn’t need him anymore. My weight loss had been so successful that there was no trace of my old self. But the real reason he moved on was because I saw myself differently. My confidence was up, and that had been his main goal all along.