I got a text message calling me a [expletive] ten different ways. That could only mean one thing--Mike was back from Iraq. I called him. We cursed each other out. Then we made plans to drink. “Freedom isn’t free, mother [expletive],” he said. “So buy me beer.” It was the least I could do. He’d just spent 18 months in the sandbox, and I was dying to hear about his experiences, particularly because I was getting ready to go to the sandbox.
They are some of the most vivid memories of my childhood. We carried piles of chopped wood into the house, stacking it next to the fireplace. My father mashed newspaper and leaned kindling on it, shifting the logs into the flames until the entire room glowed and warmed. Stockings dangled on the mantle. Snow tumbled from the clouds in droves. The pines grew santa beards and moaned under the weight of the ice.
The instant I saw my daughter’s face for the first time, I almost fell over. Slammed directly in the chest with the proverbial two by four, I stood there enamored, trying to breathe. I stammered out her name in a near whisper. I was a completely stunned, happy idiot. My eyes watered. My knees went weak, and everything went blurry beyond her face. Prior to this she was merely the strange culprit behind my wife’s nausea and expanding abdomen. She was the reason I’d been waking multiple times in the middle of the night to whacks in the head from whirling elbows and flying pillows. My wife would grunt and sigh and mutter things like “Is it a hundred degrees in here?” as she tried to get comfortable. Once she nestled into an agreeable position, I would put my hand on her abdomen and feel my unborn daughter jab, roll, and rock. I had only been able to attempt to divine her face from the mystifying ultrasound photos. Now, after what seemed like a long strange dream, she had arrived. Seeing her actual face for the first time had me wobbling.
CD: Swan Songs
Record Label: A&M/Octone