My Boy

I remember pacing around our room waiting for the nurse to come get me. I remember it distinctly, because Grandma Christie was laughing at me. It was a nervous laugh, a laugh that was hiding its own anxieties about the day, a memorable laugh. We were wearing our ugly blue scrubs and hair nets.

Quick theory: Newborn babies are kind of weird looking, so hospitals try to make everyone around them dress up in the most ridiculous looking outfits available to make the babies appear cute in comparison. This strategy works.

We had been awake for hours. I think we got up at four, but your Mom would know for sure. I'm already forgetting the easiest details: What time did we get up? What time did we leave for the hospital?

I can tell you one detail for sure: the nurses were dead wrong about how long it would take to get your Mom ready for the birth. I know this because it was the reason for my pacing.

We had come into the hospital about two hours early, (Or maybe just ninety minutes? Ask your Mom.) so they could get her prepped for the operation. You were, as the ultrasound technician lovingly put it, 'Enormous,' so you were a scheduled delivery. The plan was, we would come in to the hospital and meet the nurses who would help with the delivery, your Mom would be taken to the operating room while Grandma and I waited in our room, and then after they got her all hooked up to the machines and anesthetic, the nurses would come and bring us to her. They said it would take fifteen minutes.

At ten minutes I was already pacing. Not frantic, just trying to move, trying to get some energy out. Grandma had already started laughing at me at this point. I was laughing back a little bit. We took pictures of each other wearing those ridiculous outfits to lighten the mood, but we were both watching the clock as it ticked over to fifteen minutes...sixteen minutes...seventeen minutes...

By twenty minutes, I was withdrawing a little into myself. Still pacing, but less interactive with Grandma, less interested in joking and talking. I was starting to prepare myself for the news the nurses were sure to bring me: That your Mom had died, that you had died along with her. That the reason they had taken so long to come get us was because they were drawing straws to see who would come deliver the bad news.

Twenty-five minutes in, your Grandma caught on and told me everything was fine, they were just taking longer than expected, that nothing was wrong. What a sweet thing to say. This is how it works in a family crisis: One person is allowed to freak out at a time. I had started pacing and being nervous first, so by default, Grandma had to calm me down and be rational. Poor Grandma. I had stolen her jitters.

Finally, finally, finally. The nurses came through the door and asked us to follow them. We walked, a little behind, down the hall and through two swinging doors to where your Mom was laying. Her eyes were closed, her expression was pained, but her tears were drying. I swept in heroically (Don't listen to your Mom if she tells you otherwise) and held her head in my hands. I whispered to her that we were there, that everything would be okay, that we were about to be parents. She was breathing heavily when she opened her eyes and looked at me.

'I love you,' I said. 'I love you,' she said.

You will hate that part of the story, but it's true. Your Mom and I were stupid for each other.

We heard you before we saw you. Your voice was deep and it rattled, crying out for us to help you. The nurses cleaned you, and weighed you, and checked to make sure you were safe. Then they wrapped you in a blanket and stuck a small knit cap on your head to keep you warm. Then they handed you to me.

I remember thinking how unfair it was that, after all the work your Mom had done over the last nine months, I was the first to get to hold you. Here she was, lying on a bed sweating and crying, and I was holding the thing she had given up her body for for the past year.

I didn't mind, of course. I just thought it was unfair.

I brought you over to her, and we spent some time looking at you, and you spent some time crying at us. Then a few days later you started staring at us, and crying at us. A few months went by and you would smile at us too, when you weren't staring and crying. You learned how to laugh about two months ago, and I never want you to stop.

I know this isn't a big philosophical point to make, and it's one that I always get tired of hearing other parents talk about. Your Grandma Watson talks about it every time I see her, and I think every other parent in the world has already had this revelation, but this is the first time it has really ever hit me: You are older than you used to be. You are six months old tomorrow.

I look at your face now, and I already have a hard time seeing the baby that the nurses gave me to hold.

Stop.

Please.