First Time Dad

Insane!

Well, in a good-bad way.

It was one hot mid noon of October '08, my eyes were heavy with sleep, there's a nervousness that I had not the nightmare of feeling before, my wife was on the delivery room but it felt like I was the one having to labor it all. The tension was too much that it played multiple dvd's on my head, The Notebook, Titanic, and some of those sappy Cornetto movies you won't catch tough guys watching. The what if's are pouring cats and dogs in this little nutty skull of mine, and for a while I felt a numbness of all things physical: the place where I was, the people who were with me, and Me. Everything looked gray-ish. It was like a 60's movies where things are cloaked in dirty white-gray colors, and there were fluctuations of slow movements suddenly speed bolting then slowing down again, all happening in the oh-so uncompromising insidiousness of silence.

For the nth time in my life, I was watching me from afar. The only difference was the glaring starkness of it all that made me say,"This is not a movie, no it ain't. This is reality!" Suddenly a surge of hopelessness drowned whatever floating log of connection I had with the world, and for minutes that seemed like an eternity, my conscious normal reaction was nowhere to be found.

I watched me get to school though, watched me taught, no, squabbled the lessons, watched my students' frowns beveled even more on their young disappointed faces. I was on till five. The me that was watching me, was ultimately not at school. I was thinking hard and praying hard for my laboring wife. They tell you that the first ones always wanted to extend their stay in the belly-home. It's a comfort thing. Not for my wife.

It seemed that I lost 4 hours of my life that day. When I got home all senses came to life when they told me,"Babae!"(It's a girl!). It was as if a switch had been turned on and the numbness came to pass. At first I did not know what to feel; elated, relief. I think I settled with both. I rushed to my wife's side, and there it was, the cute little thing, glowing skin and all soundly asleep with her first time mom.

"Muntikan ng maceasarian. Wala ng lakas si misis mo, pero yung bata, fighter. Yung huling push nakalabas din(We would have opened her up. Your wife's too tired then but the baby's a fighter. We did push through.) " They told me. I thought I was more relieved.

I did not sleep well that night. I was transfixed by this sweet little miracle who has a lot of my dna composing her 6 lbs frame. And all I could think was, here goes to eternity.