An Anniversary By Any Other Name
[Image note: I asked Meta Imagine to generate a movie poster for a family comedy film called “Father’s Day” and gadzooks, did it make a couple of doozies. I hope you enjoy them as much as I did.]
Today marks my 9th anniversary celebrating Father’s Day (which makes me think that I should plan something special for my 10th anniversary of Father’s Day… maybe another kid? I’m sure my wife would be thrilled at the idea of a new baby now that I am 50 and too tired to get up off the couch, let alone run after a toddler).
Thinking of being a father, I can’t help but recall when I first found out that I was, in fact, going to be a father. There wasn’t any Alfred Hitchcock zoom in on my face, the world wasn’t spinning around me, and there was no sudden swelling of emotion (either unbridled joy or unflinching panic). Just a lot of confusion and uncertainty, sort of like getting text notifications that your airline flight is being delayed, oh wait no it’s not, oh sorry yes it is, etc.
You see, at the time, May and I were aware that it was unlikely we would have a kid together. May had been told by one of her doctors, who possessed a remarkable ability to resist any type of bedside manner, that my wife was deeply unlikely to ever have children. From what I heard, it was delivered with the care and tenderness of a ringside professional wrestling announcer.
This really affected my wife, but over the years before we met, she gradually started to just accept what she had been told.
Then I showed up with my Midwestern virile ways, and next thing you know, we were knee-deep in pregnancy tests, trying to figure out what was going on.
For the record, the pregnancy tests that May had picked up were supposed to be easy to read: 1 line means you are not pregnant, and 2 lines means that you are pregnant. But for May, they kept turning out with 1 intensely bright line, and 1 line that was barely visible; was that barely visible line, like, always there, and only when it is bright like the other line does it mean a pregnancy? Did it mean it was too early to tell? Did it mean that we needed to invade Normandy? Like, the package instructions really didn’t help to clarify.
May finally bought an expensive digital pregnancy test, one that gave you a number range, and if you were above, for example, 20, then you were pregnant. So May gave it a whirl (or a “whiz” if you really want to be accurate) and this one gave us a number around 362, or something. So, yes, slightly over the threshold.
My own theory is that I think what happened with the non-digital ones is that May was, indeed, so very much pregnant (because, again, I am a very virile Midwestern man; have I mentioned that?) that the bright pregnancy line actually soaked up all of the dye from the test, making it so vibrant but leaving nothing else for that other line.
Regardless, before you knew it, we were in the hospital for over 48 hours.
Why? Well, even then, Gracie was proving her “stubborn” chops and did not want to leave the womb. Poor May had to go through hours upon hours of medications to try and induce labor, while I soldiered on by watching baseball and snacking on Rice Krispie treats. After a couple of days of no change, the hospital suddenly shifted from first gear to fifth when they decided to do a C-section: “Well, inducing labor has not been successful, so will be doing a cesarean section, and it’s all perfectly safe and normal, and OH MY GOD WE HAVE TO IT NOW ROLL HER INTO THE OPERATING ROOM AND YOU DAD GET THESE SCRUBS ON AND GRAB YOUR STUFF COME ON NO TIME TO WASTE GO GO GO!!!!”
Seriously, my 5th grade football practices had less cardio in them.
By the time I arrived in the operating room, May was in the weird table/chair thing, and also sedated a bit; she was conscious, but in a dream-like state. I stayed next to her, so even if she wasn’t completely aware, she would hopefully know that I was there with her. In fact, when they asked if I wanted to watch as they made the cut to bring Gracie into the world, I actually declined: I wanted to stay next to May, holding her hand.
I could, however, hear the birthing cry of little Gracie, along with the nurse stating, “Oh, hello, you are peeing already! Oh my goodness, you are peeing AND pooping! Aren’t you a show-off?” When cows are born, they can start walking within seconds; for my daughter it was bowel movements and detrusor muscle contractions. Which, apparently, is pretty advanced stuff.
Side bar: today I learned that you pee by contracting your detrusor muscle. File that away for your next bar trivia night.
I don’t know if May heard the nurse’s compliments to Gracie, but May smiled softly at me and said, “We did it.” I think she started to fall asleep at that point, given that she had been up for like 48 hours by then.
As they let May rest, I was then brought over to the warming table with Gracie. When babies leave the warmth of their mommas for the first time, they put kids under what is essentially a heat lamp to keep them warm while the baby is cleaned up. Shortly afterward, they handed me my little, little girl (seriously, despite her being a hefty birth weight, I could basically hold her in one hand) and she cuddled up against my chest. Bare chest, no less, as we were doing the skin-to-skin process to help with the bonding of the baby. Well, for Gracie and me, it was more like skin-to-chest-hair, but I like to think my chest hair acted like a down comforter.
Regardless, Gracie was pretty exhausted as well, and was soon sleeping snuggled up against me, this tiny little person full of hope and promise that May and I had brought into this world.
Every now and then I will dwell on some quantum mechanics / alternate universe timelines, and how my current life might be difficult if one singular thing had changed: If I went to San Francisco or SCAD for my graduate studies as opposed to Parsons; If I had somehow managed to jump out of the way so that the driver didn’t break my leg in the crosswalk; If I hadn’t mistaken that green pepper for a green bean. And so on.
With Gracie, though, it’s hard to imagine life otherwise. Sure, May and I would be rolling around in huge piles of money, but that would have been such a deeply hollow substitute. The comedian Jake Johannsen put it best when he said, “You can’t believe how much you love your kids,” and it’s 100% true. Gracie is a good kid, to be sure, but as she starts scoping out her teenage years ahead of us she is seeing new territories to explore, like the Swamps of Sass and the Mountains of Melodramatic Moaning.
But all it takes is one of those big patented Gracie hugs and/or her little giggles to wash all the bad stuff in the world away.
Anyway. Father’s Day. Thanks to Gracie, I get to celebrate it. So, if you’ll excuse me, a trip to Chip City and a family game of Dominion await me.