"The Mother and Child Reunion"

Impossible to describe, in an all inclusive manner, the up-and-down twirl-around, emotionally-charged-freight-train experience of having a child. I remember counting, pushing, blood-soaked orifice peering and sweaty furrowed brows. I remember the ground-hog like peek Havyn's slimy noggin first made. It reached the war-torn, moistened surface with valiant effort and remained the clogged-drain object for many more pain stinging pushes. Doctor wanted to suction her out. He nabbed a make-shift suction cupper and began the bruising. Her head, swelled and oozy, slipped through. The scene was familiar. I watched with interest years earlier at "the Miracle of Birth" tape during Health Ed. Most kids collapsed their heads against their desks, muddling out "eeewwww" and "siiiick." I, bright eyed and bushy-tailed, soaked in every detail. The vagina is a fascinating thing. No other body part emits such candid duality. One moment it's the tunnel to light and life, where education awaits, and the next it's the x-rated provocateur, luring men like mice to a trap.

When Havyn finally squeezed through, she was put aboard the mother ship of nursery carts. She was an awakening creature of the night, slimy and dark. Her caterwaul pierced the air like a fog horn. Nurses snaked her throat like plumbers to a drain, stuffing the probes in and suctioning meconium out. I stood between my little yelping goo ball and the abyss from which she exited. The doctor threaded his needle, calmed my wife with statements like "perfectly normal," and "happens all the time" and began the forging of the "level two," torn, animal-bite-like surface. She was white and barely moving. Her marathon, 21 hours of 2-minuet-apart contracting stomach muscles was over. The cause for her laborious, courageous effort laid 20 feet away but to her, seemingly forever. Havyn's high-decibel concert seemed to be nearing its finale. Wrapped like a burrito in a pink blanket, the nurse handed her to me and pointed to my wife. In moments like these you forget about science and biology. You don't pay attention to truths of a newborns black and white, foot-long visual capabilities. When you look in her eyes you know she's looking back. I had 20 feet with her and felt like an armored Truck driver carrying a sack of fortune, nothing was going to stop me from getting to my destination. Now, quiet, clean and warm, Havyn was nothing like the hideous mucky monster baby who crawled from out of the dark. She laid still and peaceful and I was soaking up this long-awaited meeting but something compelled me to hastely approach my wife. Because, in the words of Paul Simon "the mother and child reunion was only a motion away."