Month-iversary No. 7

Hey Wavy,

Three minutes left to say Happy 7-Month Birthday!

I don't know why I keep taking pictures of you guys sleeping. It's kind of like Harvey Keitel in that movie, Smoke. He takes pictures of his storefront every day for years, and puts them in photo albums. To other people, all the photos look the same, but to him, each photo is richly different from all the others.

This photo is different, because you've got your little leg thrown over his, you see. A moment worth committing to film, in my opinion.

Each time we hit a month-iversary, I'm immediately transported back in time to the day you were born. Not to that moment you were first placed in my arms; I was too drugged and traumatized to clearly remember any of that. No, the most clear-cut memory I have of Friday, November 17, 2006, is hanging out in the parking lot of the hospital at six in the morning.

I was to show up at 6:30 to fill out paperwork and prep for surgery, so your daddy and I were sitting in the car, killing time and waiting for your brother, Nana and Papa to show up. It was dark and really cold. I was wild with anxiety about being under the knife in less than an hour. I don't remember much about what we talked about. Mostly about how your brother's life was going to be drastically, earth-shatteringly different by the end of the day. How I felt like a lamb to the slaughter. That I had seen Papa in the parking lot of the hotel as we had driven past earlier that morning, smoking a cigarette.

The three of them finally caught up with us, there in that hospital parking lot, under quaking aspens for which you were named, and we went inside. The rest is a blur.

So when I remember the day you were born, dear heart, those last few moments of clarity are all I can recall, before you arrived and grabbed my by the heart and changed us all forever.