A Long Day

This morning, I left the hospital at about 8am after a long night watching and helping my baby being born. It was rainy and wet and gray outside. Sleep deprivation seemed to flatten everything and made me feel like I was walking through two dimensions. On the other side of the road, in the exact parking spot where I'd parked our temperamental Subaru 12-hours earlier, was a car that looked identical to it. But it wasn't the same car. It couldn't be. Because everything has changed.

When I parked our car there on Friday night, Emeline was puffing inside it and reciting the alphabet to try to stay calm through her contractions. That afternoon, I had been keeping track of the contractions by writing the time they arrived on the back of my hand. Outside the hospital, I fussed over our bags and asked Emeline, whose eyes were tightly closed and hidden beneath a frown, whether I should get back in the car and move it forward a foot or two so that it was better placed in its parking spot. Surprisingly, she was non-committal.

We now live in a vastly different parallel universe. Overnight, it became an alternate world. In this new world a boy with hairy shoulders called Maxwell Ezra Kemp, who has an English mouth and a Filipino nose, controls everything we do.

He wasn't here, and now he is. Between Friday and Saturday, an idea became a person. Life was simple, and now it is beautiful.

Maxwell Kemp: Whatever he wants, he shouts for it.

Does that make any sense?