There was supposed to be a window, but there wasn't. She was supposed to be behind it, but she wasn't.
I had seen this in hundreds of movies and there was always a window. My wife and I were supposed to be looking through it, arm in arm, me standing a good four or five inches taller than her, broad shouldered, wearing a wide grin, maybe even doing a little manly wave, pointing through the window with the mouthpiece of my tobacco pipe. My wife should have been wearing something simple but tasteful, a floral-print dress, perhaps, with pearls. She should have looked through the window, then up at me, then back through the window again, her look reflecting her awareness of how lucky she was to be both standing next to me and looking though the window at our new baby, sleeping quietly a good three feet from us.
But there was no window.
My wife? She was in a hospital bed, sleeping, drugged on painkillers, wearing a floral gown to be sure, but one that did not meet in the back, recovering from the abdominal surgery we so casually call a C-section. And I was pacing up and down the hallway of the maternity ward, disheveled, shoeless, unshaven, shrunk back to my normal 5 feet 8 inches, looking like I could protect no one from even the smallest of threats. And our baby was in my arms. Screaming to wake the dead.
It was 3 AM and I was in my sixth hour of learning that I didn't know shit.
Kathryn had been born mid-morning the day before and, after the doctors and nurses stopped torturing her, she had slept almost the entire day away. Grandparents, aunts, and uncles had passed her around all day, each hoping to be the one holding her when she finally opened her eyes. And when she did open them, they crept up with an agonizing slowness, each glimpse of blue eye underneath so much more amazing than anything seen before on earth. Pilgrims should have lined the block to see them.
But nobody was seeing those eyes at 3 AM, her eyelids clenched so tight a crowbar could not have found purchase there. Her angelic face had shrunk to a mere fraction of its former size, all to make room for her open mouth and its screams. The screams had begun at 9 PM. To be sure, they probably weren't screams to everyone. To the nursing staff, I imagine they hardly raised an eyebrow, but to me, they were unbelievable.
Probably the best information I could give a new parent, and something I wish I had known at the time, is that it is millions upon millions of years of successful evolution that allows your newborn to cry at just the right pitch and volume to compel you into action.
But I was all out of actions. Had been for hours. I only knew two lullabies and they weren't working. The first time I had ever held or rocked a baby had been with this very child not but half a day ago. Plus, I was afraid of the nurses. That fear had been drilled into me by the militant breast-feeding commandos who taught the lactation class we had attended months earlier. "Beware the nurses," they told us. "They'll have a bottle in that baby's mouth before you can say 'Lower IQ'! Then your baby will be RUINED FOREVER! She'll be STUPID and UNNATURAL and you'll NEVER LOVE HER like you would a breast-fed baby." Everytime I passed the nurses' station with my little bundle of wails, I hunched over a little more, worried that one of them might try to squeeze a bottle past me. (Of course, I also knew if they were to try, all I had to do was call out "La Leche League! I need you!" and flash my boob-shaped emergency distress signal and the League would appear instantly. They have superpowers. "La Leche League powers, activate! Form of a nipple! Form of a proper latch!")
So there was just me. Me and Kathryn. Back and forth, up and down that hallway, trying to let my wife get some sleep.
Kathryn finally stopped screaming around 5 o'clock in the morning. I had tried everything I knew and nothing had worked. I was beat, crushed, a broken man. My fortitude had been tested and found wanting. That morning, around 8 o'clock, when my parents, knowing only the show-baby Kathryn of the day before, came by the hospital room to announce that they were going to head back home, I lost it. I broke down right there in the hallway, crying in front of my parents like a child lost in a supermarket.
Looking back on it now, I realize two things. The first is that sometimes a person needs to be stripped down to his bare essence before he can be rebuilt anew. Like a bad Hollywood drama, my life had just entered the end of Act II, where the hero's plans are crushed, his dreams foiled, and his enemy is on the move, nevermind that my enemy only weighed seven pounds and drooled. Most really bad evil villains drool. Really.
The second thing I realize looking back on that night six and a half long years ago, is that we should really bring back the window.
"Bobby, I want you downfield."
