Introductions
“You: —out.”
And just like that, I was removed from the room. Run off and unceremoniously dismissed by a monstrous regiment of women, made up of every nurse in the hospital, every female in the state, every ovary in the solar system, my mother-in-law, the (female) doctor, and my wife.
No explanation other than, “You haven’t eaten in twelve hours. Go. Get out of here. Leave her to us.” And inasmuch as I had no working category for what had just come over me, I did know that, in spite of the fact that I never wanted to leave her side again, I better get food in my body before it was being picked up off the floor and fed intravenously. And, besides, there was something newly flattering about what I’d just been called.
I left the room, navigated the hallways which had, in the space of half a day, gone from labyrinthine to second-nature, and made my way to find nourishment.
And, on the way, my nose closing in on the sources, I was suddenly flash-backed to a Very Deep Quiet…because of the aroma of something like incense. From what felt like, what sounded like, what smelled like Very Long Ago.
So I interrupted my direction, famished as I was, to follow the redolent invitation…because I knew what this meant. And, turning, the corner…I was right.
A chapel.
And the Very Deep Quiet.
Considering the great risk in the simple act of sitting down in a pew (I was exhausted enough to wonder whether I’d get back up), I took my place and did my level best to hold it together. And lost. Because, about two hours before…
…I was holding her hand and leaning in toward her face, turned toward me. Then away. The strain and the endurance palpable. If there’s a more acicular feeling of helplessness as a man, I’ve not encountered it. But I held her hand hoping she would crush it in a vice grip, forcing me to somehow share the struggle and soothe my insecurities.
But she didn’t. And that arrested my attention more than I can find words, because it meant that she was, by herself, absorbing the momentum of delivering our baby. And though I was there, that’s all I was.
And my face down by hers, trying to comfort, the room fell completely quiet, and then the strangest thing in the world happened: it got even Quieter. Or somber. Or sacred. Or Something. A perfect Stand Still.
Words really do fail.
But I noticed it immediately and raised my head to see the smiling face of the older woman there standing on the other side of my wife massaging her back, a wonderful friend who journeyed with us a long way and whom we invited to be in the delivery room for the arrival. And she was several steps ahead of me, meeting my confused wondering with a gentle and knowing smile. And just three words to tell me what was happenning.
To which I responded, “…what do you mean, ‘she has a transmission?’” (Thanks, hearing loss.)
Louder, Trying Not To Laugh At The Man Whisper: “No…she’s in transition.”
And in an instant, though I couldn’t quite graph what I’d just been told, I was told enough to give purchase to my seeking mind and understand that, where my wife was now was a place I could not join her. Nor could any other person. Not in this most crucial space.
She was in the midst of what I’ve heard called The Craft of the Father. That is, the space where Life comes through the woman at a soul level, and at its most profound moment, when the Door between this world and the next swings open. I just happened to be in the room and realized shoes were a desecration, because this just became hallowed ground.
Much freneticism.
Nurses, doctor, monitor, one more time, you can do it, you have to.
And then he breached the old with one very lusty cry, announcing the arrival of our New Normal, all seven pounds and one ounces of him.
And the doctor held him with assurance and expertise. While still he cried and protested.
So, I left her to go cradle him. And got very near his little face. And spoke his name for the very first time.
“August…”
A statement, not a question. Because that is your name and I am your daddy (that was the newly flattering name I’d just been called).
And he opened his eyes. And I was the first thing he ever saw.
And, as God is my witness, he didn’t cry again for the rest of the day. Nor did he close his eyes until the weight of the journey came to rest heavily on his little shoulders and sleep overtook him later that afternoon.
At which point the women pushed me out of the room unapologetically.
At which point I went to find a cafeteria.
At which point I smelled something wonderful.
At which point I smelled something Quiet.
At which point I sat down for a man to Man.
At which point I began crying like the newborn I’d met not too long ago.
At which point I thanked God for the blessed little loan, and then promised Him I’d do my level best to see him safely back Home someday.
At which point it became important to me to be the kind of daddy that showed this little boy how to one day form his own friendship with God.
At which point, seven years later, after tucking him in bed and turning out the light and then turning to leave the room, I heard:
“Daddy?”
“Yeah, buddy.”
“I think I’m ready to start my friendship with Jesus now.”
At which point, everything came to another perfect stand still.
At which point I thanked God for the darkness because eyes full of tears and a face full of Do. Not. Choke. Up. have a way of getting in the way of introductions.
Which really wasn’t an introduction at all. Well…maybe it was a formality. Because we’d been trying to love Love into this youngling from the first moment we realized we were sobered out of Not Knowing and thrown onto the shore of You Don’t Even Know You Don’t Know, in the form of learning how to waltz with a toddler standing on the tops of your feet while you kept dancing barefoot in the kitchen.
Through the years.
And the mistakes.
And the diapers, the carriers, the first night out just the two of us again, the shots, the first steps, the removal of training wheels, and the moments still too potent, and lethal to my heart, and beautiful in my heart, and painful all the same, to write about (so I won’t).
Right up to the moment when God stood waiting for an introduction, in Divine Humility, while I said to my son…
“August…”
It’s just beautiful. Speechless…