Heads Up: A Boy is Born

It's coming up on 4 and 1/2 years since life sprang from above a crimson pool on the laminate wood floors of the birthing center, room 4. The incessant coaching to push, the exhausted wailing, was replaced after nearly 24 hours of hard labor, not with sighs of relief, but with the aghast exclamations of the nurses. They cried out in unison, hissing a shrill alarm as the cold shine of the stainless steel surgical scissors extended from my palm. The mouths behind the surgical masks were surely agape. "What's wrong?" I demanded. One nurse regained her composure: "Nothing. Nothing's wrong," she said assuringly. "It's just that they're not supposed to be able to hold their head up like that." As I cut Silas free they explained that newborns can't hold their heads up, but when my boy finally emerged he bent his head upward, wide eyed, and craned his neck to survey his new surroundings. Untethered after two snips--the first one was reluctant--Silas was booked into his bassinette, where the nurses inked and printed his feet after working intently to smooth away the coat of ooze he came out with. Then I had the first contact with my son. Hesitantly--despite his early mastery of head movement, he seemed as tender and breakable as an early spring shoot--I probed him with an outstretched pinky. He latched on; his grip grows ever tighter.

Over these four years and change, I've sketched out a handful of memories of fatherhood, occasionally besting the blinking cursor with something that, if not for its overwrought sentimentality, might resemble readable prose. Intermittently at best (though my child is a daily inspiration, I am no daily blogger) this space will house those sketches that heretofore have remained imprisoned among countless handouts and assignment sheets in "My Documents." And, hopefully, new sketches will emerge in time. I invite my family and friends to indulge me with your readership as I indulge myself in the love of my spirited Silas, my still point of the turning world.