Becoming a parent changes you.
It matures you in a good way.
A way that you can never completely explain.
I mean, I’m not saying I don’t trust people that don’t have kids.
I’m saying that people that don’t have kids can not be trusted in the same way.
This is the same as two seasoned Jarheads trying to explain how the world works to a civilian.
The civilian doesn’t know what they don’t know.
See, going from teenager to your mid-20’s is growing up in one way – and becoming a parent is growing up in another way.
On another level, having children is simply as forward a thinking move as I can conjure.
It’s a grasp at civilization, at lineage, and at something bigger than yourself.
A parent knows they are a link in a chain that goes back thousands and thousands of years.
The world does not revolve around them, for they are part of something much bigger.
(Don’t make me get theological.)
I guess if you know, you know.
Understand: Having a child is coming of age all over again – it’s a second puberty.
I had my first baby, Caitlin Rivers Crowell—the “Rivers” for my dad’s mother’s maiden name—shortly after Right or Wrong was released. (She was born at seven a.m., weighing seven pounds, seven ounces, and when she was about seven months old I began recording my second Columbia album, whose centerpiece was my song “Seven Year Ache.”) She was a dark-eyed, tiny beauty whom we called “Baby Elvis” because of her wild shock of black hair. I was overcome with emotion on becoming a mother, and shocked at how quickly, and permanently, my worldview changed. I was stunned to find how territorial I felt, how flooded with love and fear for the baby’s safety. I had been a free spirit, a nomad, someone who went back and forth to Europe constantly, who mixed records until six in the morning and liked to hang with the guys in the band. Suddenly I was walking a colicky baby in the middle of the night, obsessed about every burp and wheeze and cry. I adored my new baby Caitlin, but I didn’t have a clue about how to balance being a mother of an infant and a four-year-old stepdaughter with the demands of making and promoting records. My anxiety levels were off the charts.