Having been around the sun a few times or so, I have had many experiences, sometimes profound, sometimes simple. They all shape you. Some are like stovetops, fires you foolishly touch, lightning bolts of pain. Some are warm comforts, quiet whispers of passion, pillow dreams of bliss.
But my most clarifying? There are details to this, but it occurs in flashes of memory when I think of it all these years later.
It was a hot August, and my wife needed a c-section as our first child was breech. All I could do really was support her as things moved along. I was glassy-eyed when they hustled me out of the OR so they could give her general anesthesia because the epidural wasn’t working. While she was in recovery with her mom, I was in with our son, and he was perfect. I forgot my camera, though, and so I rushed to get it.
When I returned, the nurses were rushing around him, and I could hear a helicopter. They had already put an IV in his temple and were putting him in an incubator. I am sure they told me what was happening, but all I remember were these words: Children’s Hospital. I know I checked in with the new mom who wasn’t going to get to see her newborn, but like the conversation with the nurses, I don’t remember the specifics anymore.
I do remember driving across the city, fast enough that the helicopter blades were still rotating when I arrived at the ER. The next seven hours were a blur as well, and then he was in the NICU, and I was gowned up and holding him. His first surgery was at just hours old.
We had no cell phones so once my son was settled, I dashed back across town to see my wife, and once she fell asleep, her eyes tear stained, I went home. I laid on the floor, exhausted and not sure what to do, the universe overwhelmed me.
I was barely in my twenties, freshly spun and dry, by the treatment center industrial complex of the eighties, and the world had become very, very real. There were people who were depending on me, not just emotionally but physically too, for their survival. The reality of that moment is not lost on me, even now.
A couple of other things happened that night, other stories for other times, fate’s blocks clicking together in the building of a life.
It was truly my foundational experience from which sixty something me became… me.
Remain Lost 