Our Biggest Adventure Yet

I used to stride confidently down Malcolm X Blvd in Bed-Stuy at late-night hours, the only white guy out in the 'hood looking for bodega beers.

I used to ride my bicycle from Watts five miles west through South Central to get to unincorporated Westmont for work, the only white guy crazy enough to be riding a bike out in that 'hood.

I once flew half-way across the planet, then sat in customs for two hours, then rode in a taxi across Ho Chi Minh City to get to a bus-station, then rode a bus for five more hours before paying a random dude to drive us to our hotel.

I once squeezed my (relatively) gigantic ass into a tiny Toyota minivan Autobus as a means of getting around in Honduras.

None of those things were as terrifying as being handed my fire-engine-red five-and-a-half pound newborn son---a baby I pulled from my wife's body---minutes after its arrival.

I don't mean terrifying in a conventional sense. Women are always shocked by how men, sometimes the toughest and most macho specimens, are dumbstruck with fear in the presence of newborns. There's just something about a being so tiny and vulnerable that makes men feel likewise. Like the memories are embedded in our DNA.

After all the preparations, and reading, and classes, and nutrition skills, and planning--the baby came five weeks early. Of course it's our kid.

After all the nerves, and anxiety, and fears over being forced to be medicated during birth, after all the labor and the contractions and unmedicated pushing, after doing all of these things in a hospital instead of our birthing center, I'm holding this tiny red human, a human I helped create.

He's the culmination of both months in the immediacy and a-decade-and-a-half in the long-term, the culmination of a love that is difficult to describe, and for the first time in my life there's a human that needs me to make sure it stays alive, for the next ten minutes as Corrie showers, for the next two weeks as we get his weight and jaundice under control, and for the next sixty years that I will be alive.

The fear comes from the absolute vulnerability of this tiny thing. Not afraid for the future, like whether I'll be a fine dad (frankly never a fear I've had), but having never really been around infants, having never changed a diaper, the fear is born from the thought that ignorance may jeopardize this awesome, amazing, little human I helped create.

Many things from June 10th, 2016 I won't ever forget. Like the red. I won't ever forget the red. The books said "a healthy, unmedicated newborn will be either pink or red," but this little guys RED, like Hellboy from the movies red.

I'm trying to figure out how to post about the birth (which was awesome) and the postpartum recovery (which was sub-optimal) along with the wider narrative of how we got to where we are and where we're going. That stuff won't be here.

Our son, Cassius Alexander, was born at 35 weeks (technically late preterm), and weighed in at 5 lbs 8 oz and 18.5 inches long. He was covered in blonde hair, head to toe, which elicited an excited, "You've got your daddy's hairy shoulders!" from me (I know it will all disappear soon enough).

So far he prefers Walt Whitman to Thomas Pynchon, but that may have just been a timing issue. Time will only tell.

Now we have all summer to hang out instead of only half...

Our Biggest Adventure Yet!

Corrie and Cass