There is magic in the air.

Ever since Gaibi and I got together, it seems there have been these benevolent forces behind the scenes, pulling the strings and making it all cohere in ways that defy explanation.

Lets begin with the present. Our new roommate, Jan, moved in about one and a half months ago from down the street where she was living with former partner and their mutual daughter, Jayda. When Jan split with her partner what she wanted most was to be near her daughter. Our house is about 65 feet from the door of where she was previously living, and it just so happened that our roommate, Emily, was moving out to go work on an organic farm in northern California. Well Jan's new partner, Ernie, recently found out that his roommate had been criminally unfair to him as regards rent payments and essentially had to move out of his house without warning. Luckily we have the space for him to sleep until he can secure a new place to live, and he gives us free firewood and another male in the environment (Isaiah's gender is not pronounced enough to count yet). Furthermore, while our other roommate, Jenny, went away for a single month to do a yoga teacher training in upstate New York, it just so happened that Gaibi's sister Katrina needed to kill a month on a budget while waiting to leave for a gardening internship in Alaska (I know, they have garden's in Alaska? The summer there gets 22 hours of daylight at its peak, can you imagine the possibilities!?) So, with the exodus of two of our roommates, we were able to be of great service to three people who truly needed the space.

Today Isaiah is seven weeks old and we find ourselves rifling through the pictures and anecdotes for evidence that the time has really passed. These days he's not so much the larynx-centric milk-fiend that he initially was on the nights that i would come home from work. Each day those precious little windows through which my authentic son shines in between frequent feedings are open for ever-so-little more time, affording opportunities for gazing and adoration that bring into stunning clarity the true value of life.

What many people don't appreciate, I think, is the loneliness of fatherhood. Here is this wonderful little being, 9 months in the making for whom you have been waiting and pining with bated breath, only to find out that as a non-breasted being that your ability to satisfy him is shockingly small. As the father, your job is more akin to that of a producer in a recording studio. The mother is like the musicians, actually contributing all of her creative energies to the project of sustaining an infant. Meanwhile, the producer's job is to provide the optimum environment in which the music of life will be made. I come bearing juices and teas for Mama, cooking up grand feasts full of color to insure optimum breast milk and changing CDs upon request. For those slivers of time where Isaiah is not merely awake but present and even happy, I hold/bounce/rock/cha-cha around with him until hunger hits him like a bullet from the inside and he launches into full-shriek, demanding milk with all the patience of a Cuban dictator.

Meanwhile by day, I reprise my role as Teacher Derek in a cute little non-profit daycare around the corner that has been there since 67'. However, the stakes are up in this episode as I have been promoted to 'lead teacher' position. This effectively means that in addition to taking responsibility for the life of a brand new child, I have also managed to take on 19 more 2 to 4 year olds - and their families. It also means that I dress in button-up shirts, enforce more rules in a week than i would prefer to in a lifetime and still come home shaking sand out of my shoes and putting stain-stick on my marker-flecked wardrobe. The days are long, often bordering on 'excruciating', but nothing replenishes a weary heart like having a strawberry-blondie of about 3 feet drop a crumpled dandelion into your hand. "That's for your baby," she explains with an irresistible twinkle.

Ah, where to begin?

About a month and a half ago, Gaibi started having little crampy things starting at about 3am one night, which continued into the next day. It didn't interfere with much, we made some breakfast and watched a movie or two. When they came she just scrunched her eyebrows and got quiet. The crampies persisted throughout the day and by nightfall she was doubled over on the bed, having more transcendent experiences with pain. Laborland, they call it. Well let me be the first to tell you, Laborland is real! Where does a woman go during those contractions? I wish the answer could be Baskin-Robbins but from what I could glean it wasn't quite 32 flavors.

But we should expect nothing less of Mother Nature. She is fair. You want a human? How about nine particularly and colorfully uncomfortable months (give or take) which crescendo into the experience which i must begin another paragraph to describe:

Imagine sitting with a bottle of juice that has a little bendy straw in it and watching your significant other get their hips pried open but the unruly tools of an invisible god. Every contraction truly seemed as though some force was (and indeed it was!) pulling Gaibi's hips apart and slowly opening the door for Isaiah's grand entrance. We dragged the big trough into the house and started filling it up. Family and neighbors were called to come over with big pots so that we could boil water to add to the tub because someone seems to have accidentally put the hot water heater for a house full of hamsters in our house. Inside it was buzzing with people carrying big pots of boiling water and sinks running, a blazing fire in the stove, Gaibi enduring torture at the hands of the birth goddess, me sort of managing the event and fetching comfort stuff, it was delicious chaos. It was clear that something outside of and beyond Gaibi had taken over our house, and you could feel it in every inch of the place the moment you stepped through the door. Soon it was 2am.

3am. 4am. Lots of pain. Few interruptions save for our midwife who would come in with her assistant regularly, just to verbally check in and provide a calm voice. Throughout the night we could hear our midwives chopping wood in our backyard to feed the fire in our drafty, wood-floored living room. Sometimes the tub would begin to cool and someone would come in with our saucepan, scooping cool water out and refilling it with boiling water. Each time this happened, Gaibi's body would visibly decompress a bit. Sadly, this relief would prove a hindrance in the end.

Not long into labor Gaibi declared her sympathy for those who opt for epidurals. 13 odd hours later and i'm sort of dazed from sitting tub-side and walking throughout the house while she slowly and painful morphed into proper form.

it was about 9 am she started pushing.

this went on, moving from tub to bed to bathroom, upstairs and back a few times, around the couch, so on. it was apparent that the huge tub of warm water, however wonderful, was just too much so and actually slowed the process down. finally we were on the bed and it was everything you might think. it feels like Heaven's brass section are playing and there's lots of intensity from her screaming to my probably-by-then-very-desperate-and-emotionally-unstable-sounding consolations, to the midwife's calm, zenlike approach.

i don't know, it was a blur, but all of a sudden this happened.

the midwife said something like, "ok, GET YOUR HANDS READY, GET THEM HERE, NOW NOWW!!!" and all of a sudden there was this warm, meaty kind of little thing all flopping around in my hands and snorting like a pig, which i kind of clumsily escorted up onto Gaibi's chest and it began shrieking its virgin shrieks, which to a parent are truly heavens trombones. the next little while is a bit beyond the grasp of the English language, though i quote my midwife in saying that, "those first few hours and days with your baby are like the glue of your family, setting." it was true. here was this entire organism who had been sneakily hiding away and growing itself a body in my wife's torso, full of personality and wisdom. for the first thirty minutes, while mom had to have different procedures taken care of, Isaiah sat with me, silent. He wasn't asleep and he wasn't dazed. He was just perfectly present and beatifically quiet.

The Love is profound and awesome. Everyone was right, there is no way you can describe it. The earth and stars revolve around your baby's heart. When he cries, the skies fall. When he smiles, the whole world smiles. When he sleeps you merely sit and adore him, more enthralling than any movie. He looks like you and its weird. This is where babies come from. Now i understand.

He continues to grow and change daily, always to our delight. More on that next time.

Lovies

d and the family