Now that we’re approaching our first child’s first birthday, I can take a look back at the year that was and smile, happy and grateful for so many things. Most importantly, for the fact that we managed to keep our little bundle alive, but also for all the joy we’ve had and for all we’ve learned. It hasn’t been easy. We’ve been through sleepless nights, cranky days, sickness, worry, fighting, and every disgusting substance a baby can excrete. I’m thankful for all of it. I feel like I’m finally starting to get the hang of this thing. It’s like we were plopped in the middle of a strange land, in which we don’t speak the language and don’t know our way around, and we’re finally starting to get our bearings.

In this spirit, reading Elisha Cooper’s Crawling: a father’s first year is like reading an excellent piece of travel literature about a place we’ve already been. In sharing an experience that is simultaneously universal and unique, Cooper helps me to process my first year, to feel better about my mistakes, to feel some sense of solidarity with others who have traveled the same path.

There’s a lot in this book to contemplate and appreciate, from the acknowledgment that becoming a father does mean sacrificing something of one’s former identity, to the feelings of doubt and inadequacy amplified by snide comments from random women on the street (”‘That baby needs a blanket!’”), to coming to terms with the fact that often baby needs her mommy more than she needs her daddy. Aside from the lofty, existential issues of fatherhood, Cooper takes great joy in the wacky little things that make parenthood so wonderful, like when he’s holding his sleeping baby and observes “I could squeeze her with my arm and increase the volume of her snoring and it was like I was playing an accordion, a celebratory polka.”

What emerges as we follow Elisha and his family through his daughter’s first year is a portrait of a man first struggling to adapt to life with this inscrutable little stranger, then fretting about providing her with enough spiritual nourishment to survive and thrive, and, ultimately, falling madly in love with her. I’m glad he invited us along.