With A Clang

Happy 7th Birthday, son.

Well, Happy Birthday four days later.

These birthdays are getting laborious. Same story each year. Me refusing until 1:12 a.m., April 1, to accept the reality that you're another year older.

So, I've decided to commemorate your grand entry into this world a different way. Late, in fact, but not without a measure of significance. I want to tell you a story, here on this day four days after your birthday seven years ago.

After all, we remember our first-born children not so much by the very second they emerged from the womb, but by the day-to-day crushing realities that changed us as human beings. Those fresh, raw realizations that shaped us in those early days and were more far-reaching than simply watching a newborn baby cry for the first time.

If anything, it reminds me of how seven years has perhaps given me time to become a better father. Or, let's just say a more-experienced father.

You be the judge.

---

You were only four days old. Your head bobbled around and saliva flowed freely. You were a bit jaundiced, so you slept in nothing but a diaper in the sunlight as you came down with a case of the strangest -- but most adorable -- sounding hiccups for a good hour.

Your mother sat with you and held you in her arms. She was suffering from a nasty infection and began to feel nauseous. She called to me to help her. She was about to vomit.

On you.

So I -- as a new father inexperienced in really caring too much if someone gets thrown up on -- had to think quickly. Do I have time to snatch a fragile baby from a mother's arms? Or should I immediately try to find something to catch the downpour soon to come?

I chose the latter.

(The choice turned out to be like so many of the choices I make under duress. Kind of like the time the guy at the beach was drowning in the ocean after his float left him ... and I dove after the float to take it to him ... but by the time I got to it someone had already pulled him to safety ... and I looked like the idiot who saved the float while a guy was drowning).

I ran back to the kitchen to grab a frying pan.

Your Mom pleaded with me to hurry. She could feel it coming.

I ran over to put the frying pan under her mouth.

Clang!

I smacked you in the head with frying pan. Hard. Like "Three Stooges" hard.

She threw up on you anyway.

I grabbed you and -- for your first first bath ever in the house-- held you screaming under the faucet to clean you off. You shrieked quite a bit. I suppose you might have thought this whole life thing was going to suck if this type of ordeal was a normal part of it.

I suppose I should apologize, son, but you'll just have to understand.

I simply love to tell that story.

So, thank you on this fourth day after your birthday, for the laugh at your own expense.

And may you live life the way you entered it.

With a clang.