I’ve always been sensitive about being a late bloomer: last kid to get into the puberty party in high school; last kid to finish the SAT; last IT recruiter in my team to finally yell out “DEAL!” for my first IT recruiter agency job. I really wanted to write comedy but had stopped believing in divine intervention. All that changed when my unplanned beshert was born, my daughter, Matilda Singing Rose Kornbluth, my sweeter, funnier twin, who loves Dice, Rodney and Joan Jett as much as I do. And I am a divine intervention believer again.
Why? For starters, I no longer treat God like a divine-powered booty call, who I only call when I’m in the mood to pray or in need of some big-time requests. Now, I feel morally compelled to give thanks and praise to the Almighty every morning for blessing me with this pitch-perfect, effortlessly hilarious comedy twin I never had. I say, “Matilda, you can’t step on your pink Ukulele guitar.”She replies, “But Jimi played with his teeth.” (She meant Hendrix.) “Matilda, what did Tyson Chandler give the Knicks?” “Bupkis, Daddy, Bupkis.”
I finally got my TV writing break with VH1 Classic for America’s Hard 100 in my late thirties, two years after my beshert was born. Now I’m the Do It All Dad of the “Do It All Dad Year Podcast.” She’s been my steady, relentless believer in Do It All Dad making it as a funny man giant from the start. She makes it impossible for me to ever lose heart. Swinging her around in my Jewish Grandma’s old one-bedroom apartment to Lita Ford’s “Kiss Me Deadly” is a Heavy Metal High that I’ll cherish forevermore.
Michael and daughter Matilda
My beshert entertains her two gorgeous younger brothers while I try to make the universe laugh for a living. Especially, while their mom—my wife of nine years, Natalia Duffy-Kornbluth—is getting ready for her job as a NICU nurse. (Knowing that she revitalizes blue-faced babies makes me feel like a full-blown narcissist because all I check for is retweets.)
My daughter’s embrace of my jokes once they entered our home, sweet home, made the cycle of birth feel complete. This dreamy crossbreed of Punky Brewster and Lady Gaga makes this crazy good dada feel more blessed than the rest.
Michael Kornbluth is the author of two books, Controlling My Kids With Comedy and Do It All Dad Does Jokes, and a TV writer who has been featured on The Good Men Project, a men’s conversation of what it means to be a good man. His first stand-up comedy album, Resist This, will be released this month. He and his wife, Natalia Duffy- Kornbluth, live in Croton Falls, New York, with their daughter Matilda and two sons, Arthur and Samuel.