On The Day Before You Came

I'll be honest, I thought this day had already come. Every morning I woke up, I tried to ruminate on the previous day: Was that the day before you came? But that day just hasn't happened until now. So I woke up this morning, three times: Once to meet your brother at the foot of our bed, once with my head cricked on the bean bag in your brother's room and third time back in my bed. I woke up this morning, the day before you came and so far nothing much has happened. I made myself a cold coffee drink and a bagel. Your brother gave me a kiss before I left and told me "Bye Daddy, see you in the morning." He says the funniest things. I just finished some pretzels and downed a liter of water. I wanted a snack from the vending machine but it was found lacking.

I know your mother (who your brother affectionately has taken to calling Moms) is nervous. Her mind, if I know her, is wandering today. Mine too, for that matter. I wonder incessantly about you. What you will look like, how you will laugh and sing and dance. How you will react to your mildly insane older brother who will smother you with his affection and opinions. I wonder about all the things a typical parent wonders about. How much will everything change tomorrow? Beyond that: how much will it change like we are expecting it to change? I know, slightly metaphysical for you. Perhaps I won't read this to you until you're a little older then.

I'm trying to think if I've got anything profound to offer you about the day before you were born. If some prescient bright shining star or angelic rapture or heaven stricken silence has occurred. Some moment that signifies the leaping off of some great height, across some great chasm, landing, tomorrow, with you in our arms. And on the day before you come, I've not been able to find anything. And I think it's because I don't know you yet. I don't know, that maybe the way the sky has cleared brilliantly will be indicative of your eyes. Or that I've heard a song on the radio that will one day be your favorite song. Or the man you will marry was born today. Or your best friend was born today on the day before you came. Or the person who will help you the most in this life stubbed their toe and set off a serious of events that will culminate in the moment you need them the most. I don't know.

I know this day will meld into tomorrow and the next and next. That your presence in my life will work backwards. That's how love tends to work. It stretches out infinitely in the present, reaches ahead of us into the future, and becomes inextricably and inexorably intermingled with our pasts.

The rest of my day will pass by. I'll finish work. Go to the gym. Go home. Have dinner with your grandparents and aunt and cousins -- spaghetti!- and spend my night trying not to think about what I can't help but think about. Maybe I'll look for a profundity or two for you. One I'll share with you and tell you about over and over again. One you'll get tired of hearing but will want to hear nonetheless. I'll keep my eyes and ears open.

But as this night wanes, as it heads off to that second star to the right and I close my eyes and put my hand across Moms belly and feel you kicking inside, on the day before you came, I will say to you "Good night, sweet daughter, see you in the morning."

It's A Girl. It's A Girl. It's A Girl.

I went not expecting to know. I went not expecting to have the opportunity. I went not thinking my life was going to change. I went to bring her dinner.

But sure enough we ended up with a few minutes and an empty trauma bay (the same one that welled me when I was sick with pneumonia two years back). The Mrs was ready to know and so was I. There, the ultrasound machines are LCD screens. Far from the gray-scale flickerings of the OB/GYN office. It was portable, so we wheeled it over to the trauma bed. All this with the happenings and ringings of the white-walled, tile-floor hospital buzzing just beyond the room’s amniotic sterility. Just beyond the double doors.

Within moments there she was. Clear as day. Bottom up. Bones highlighted in the sound waves. There was her femur. There was her spine. There was her skull. From the side she was kicking. It was eerie, almost in slow motion that the white on black highlighted bone reflected out into the screen and back. She was moving… And she was clearly a she. We made sure. Went over and over the image. Then over and over our daughter’s sound resounding image. In the silence. In breath-taking irony of the trauma room.

The Mrs didn’t trust her eyes, nor mine (which, believe it or not, have been subjected to numerous x-rays and ultrasound images over the course of my life and our marriage. I saw Isaac’s broken leg on the x-ray easily, for example). So there I was, sworn to secrecy, sworn to keep the secret that we were having a little girl. A little, beautiful girl whom I had just seen for the first time. I went not expecting… and left absolutely certain that there are these things in life that amount to all the beauty I can take.

Yesterday it was confirmed. All gray-scale and hazy and on a monitor the size of my phone. But there she was. Isaac’s little sister.

Our little girl. She who carries our love.

Singular Moments

As any parent can attest, there are singular moments that epitomize the inexorable joy of being a parent. Moments when the child shows some keen insight into life or expels some uncontainable excitement towards a surprise you worked laboriously. Many times these moments count coo on us. They sneak up. Catch us unaware.

I've shared many in these spaces. But hardly a day goes by without some small instance. Last night, for example, I was holding him in the dark, rocking in the chair, his head buried in my shoulder and a blanket. I was saying "I. Love. Isaac." He responded, at my prodding to he loves: "Love Dadda Momma." I love being a Dad.

But a most notable occurrence came over the weekend. I was away. I wouldn't see him until Monday AM. I knew I would miss him. I even took him to McDonald's for a Friday AM breakfast (he loves pancakes). Something I try to do every time there'll be a significant time lapse. He talks on the phone these days, but still only when it's convenient to him (again, I apologize to all of you he's called at 6:15am on a Saturday). But it's not the same.

Anyway, the entire time I was gone, the Mrs. said he asked constantly for Daddy. Looking all over the house, looking out the window, checking the bed. The Mrs. and Mrs'-Sis. were looking at some of his baby videos on YouTube. Some of those videos include me. And it was those videos that Isaac insisted upon watching over and over again. Now Isaac isn't a computer kid yet (though in another singular moment, he points at the computer and says "Apple"), merely taken to banging on the the keys -- especially the CAPS lock which emits a green LED light when depressed. But his insistence was emphatic. To the point where he sat for the better part of an hour (several times over the weekend) with the computer on his lap, in my recliner, rocking slightly, giggling, pointing out Dadda while watching and re-watching only the videos that included me.

A child's love is persistent and profound and utterly simple. And when it shows itself, in a smile, an expression, a hug, reality comes apart. Whatever Huckabee blanket is torn, from the top down, by these happenings, to think that another one, another child is coming who carries my love...

A Triumphant Return

It's time to return. To begin writing again. To share, vent, propose, challenge, extend, contract, blabber. This morning I came up with the Top Ten things I think about in the shower. I'm not sure why; I'm quite sure it's not funny and so I won't share. Only know that I'm pretty sure it's time to re-frost the bathroom window when I can see what the weather is like outside.

To say life has been simply tough or easy or hard or fun over the past month would do the experience of life no justice. It has deserved no category. It has been an odyssey of "finding and losing and laughing and crying". I have learned much, grown much. And life does that. Stretches and tugs and pulls. Laughter is immensely important, as are a decent pair of sneakers. And to say that airline difficult is easy underestimates the inconsolable experience of my latest aviary excursion. Books can be sloggingly brilliant while sucking every ounce of endurance. A surprise movie is a little delight. Technological arrogance now pervades from my pocket -- and it's awesome.

And if I could have learned everything, I would maintain only this: "winter by spring, I lift my diminutive spire to merciful Him Whose only now is forever".

Now I have always marveled at the size of humanity. Where we stand in relation to the universe, and the nearest tree. But marvel doesn't describe the weight of glory in seeing your child for the first time, tossing and tumbling: