He was a terrible drunk, which was why my mother left him, and the years that followed would lead him into jail and homelessness. Child support was the least of his troubles, though from federal prison he did begin sending me letters, which he would sign “your father.” Later he told me he wrote letters to everyone he knew, because stamps were free.

Image Credit... Brian Rea

The vase-breaker Nick Flynn continued to appear in the news every few months during this period of indecision for me. It soon came out that there was no way he could have tripped on his shoelaces, as he claimed, and taken down all three vases with him. Each was set into a recess in the wall, and he would have had to lunge for each as he tumbled past. One article cited a museum official announcing that Nick Flynn was banned from the museum. He was subsequently banned from all museums in Britain.

It was odd to have this other self in the world, in the news, so obviously causing damage, to read about him showing up at the museum again, ostensibly to ask how the restoration was going, and being escorted out by the police, all at a time when I wasn’t feeling especially solid myself. This went on for a year, and if I were to run into an acquaintance or even an old friend after an article about him would appear, I’d eventually be asked, with a grin, “So what about those vases?”

It never seemed like a good idea for me to follow that up with, “We’re thinking of having a kid.”

Beyond the obvious and justified fear that being a father would change everything in my life, what was my hesitation? At that moment my life needed change more than anything. Though I was stalled in what I told myself was another rough patch, the difficult parts of my childhood were well behind me. I’d made it to the other side, worn but intact, mostly. I decided to check back into therapy, and began meditating daily for a half-hour, something I’d done off and on (mostly off) for years.

Sometimes I meditated on this other self, this other Nick Flynn, who broke things and became famous for it. Who made up a story about tripping on shoelaces that he himself seemed to believe. Was this my fear, that I would trip on my own shoelaces and break my daughter into a million pieces? And then tell a story I’d made up about it to deflect the blame? Was my doppelgänger pointing a way out of the woods, or a way deeper into the darkness?