Dad 2022. 58 Hours After.

You are here with us at home now. Life is a beautiful wonder and you are magnificent. I am drinking coffee at the table, Apricot is sitting on the couch looking out the window, and you and Mom are resting upstairs. The morning is quiet and the sun is chasing away the dark on our back patio. We’ve been talking to you quite a bit since you arrived. Mom’s voice when she says your name—I’ve never heard such a lovely sound. So mellifluous, an ancient lullaby. We’ve been working together to make you comfortable. She nurses you, I burp you, we change your diaper together, when you cry I walk around the room with you in my arms, you lay on my bare chest, you lay on mom’s belly, we tell you stories. We’ve been playing a lot of Fleetwood Mac for you. I’m afraid you have no say in this. Their music is good for the soul. It’s all about love and feeling and being alive.

You were born at 8:56 pm on Sunday, March 6, 2022, at the Kaiser Permanente Anaheim Medical Center. 32 hours after we induced labor, and after just 13 minutes of pushing. Mom was a warrior, getting through every contraction with that strength she keeps on reserve deep down. With every wave, we breathed together and I put my hands on mom’s lower back and watched the clock, and before you knew it, you were here, your head and body and wriggling arms and legs passing into our world. Mom and I were weeping with delight and awe at the arrival of Autumn.

There was a nurse who was with us those final few hours who made all the difference, coaching mom, helping us relax and understand. Her name is Melissa and we are grateful for her.

We learned a lot after you were born, while we were still in the hospital. A crash course in the basics: feeding, changing, swaddling (I’m afraid I’m still working on that one), learning how to try to interpret your cries. In the hospital room, I slept on a small couch by a big window that looked onto Highway 91 and the Santa Ana Mountains, and I kept gazing out, thinking of your journey to come, the byways and climbs, the horizon and your motion through the universe. By Tuesday morning we were ready to take you home, and here you are.

I should tell you that today is March 9th, which is ten years since Alexis’s mom passed away, your amazing Grandma Paula. The dates are so close together that you can’t help but be moved by it, the way things turn on this earth. Mom misses her mother every day. She has so much of her inside that you will get to know Nonna Paula through her. I never got to meet her, but many early mornings before Mom wakes up I look at the photos of Paula on the sideboard by the front door and I talk to her and I try to listen for her. You are filled with the love of everyone here now and everyone who is no longer with us. That’s the way our hearts work.

Mom is awake now and I’m going to go see her and say hi to you. It’s another new day.