Some Things Never Change [SHAWN MENDES]

February 11, 2021

Touring again after thirteen long months would have been amazing if not for the massive atomic bomb Ceci dropped on me right before I left. I couldn't go a minute without the fact that she was pregnant popping into my head. At least on stage I could get lost in my songs, but the knowledge that I was going to be a father was still present in the recesses of my brain. Even when I slept, babies permeated my dreams.

At the end of our talk, she'd told me that I had a choice to make regarding how involved I wanted to be in our child's life. Obviously I had an obligation to help provide for it, but there was a vast difference between sending Ceci a monthly check and helping raise the baby.

A couple days after I'd left Toronto, she texted me and gave me more food for thought. She said that if I didn't want to be a dad at all, we could keep the child support payments between us, and she wouldn't tell anyone that I was the father. No one knew we'd hooked up that night, so she could easily make up a story about a one night stand.

Ceci, being an overly generous soul, was trying to give me an out because she knew parenthood wasn't part of my plan, or at least not for many years.

I had quite a bit of downtime during the stint in Oceania, and I spent it isolated in my hotel room so that I could give this dilemma the thought it deserved. In the wake of coronavirus, no one questioned my desire to keep to myself, which was a blessing.

There were so many things I had to consider.

First and foremost, did I have what it took to be a good dad? I traveled a lot for my career and often spent months away from Toronto. Ceci had studied architecture in college and was working an entry level job as a draftsperson at a small firm that specialized in environmentally sustainable tiny homes. It's not like she would give all that up and travel the world so that I'd be close to our child. It wasn't fair for her to totally sacrifice her burgeoning career for mine just because I was a world famous rock star, especially when she was already giving up a lot by becoming a mom. Could I make sacrifices?

The baby was due in September, right when my North American leg was kicking off. What kind of asshole leaves his newborn child behind to sing songs on stage? People in the military did this kind of thing all the time when they were deployed, but they were needed to defend their countries. That was respectable. Concerts were hardly a necessity. If I went all in on fatherhood, I'd need to tell Andrew ASAP and cancel the dates that had been penciled in, before tickets went on sale. Or maybe I could do an abbreviated tour where I was one the road one week and home the next. That could work. Maybe.

Those things were mostly about me, though. I wasn't the one that mattered in this decision. What counted was how my involvement impacted the baby.

In a perfect world, Ceci and I would co-parent, dividing all duties evenly while giving our baby love equally. It was hard for me to see myself doing this when I didn't even want a baby in my life. My dad used to tell me all the time that you can't have sex without accepting that conception was a potential side effect. It was selfish to deny my child its father just because I hadn't planned for it. Whether I wanted the baby or not, I was responsible for it existing. This thought gave me pause. Ceci and I had created the life that was growing rapidly inside her. That was pretty amazing. When I closed my eyes, I could vividly imagine cradling a tiny newborn in my arms...

Shit. I had no idea how to care for an infant. There was time to learn, but what if I was terrible at it? I'd end up leaning on my parents a lot for support.