Introducing Estelle Juliet Kalista. Seven pounds, nine ounces, nineteen inches long. Born Sunday night at 9:43, February Twenty-First, Two Thousand Ten. Chinese Year of the Golden Tiger. Your dad especially likes that last part.
Your dad doesn't know what he's in love with more. Your gunmetal gray eyes. Their assured gaze. Your lightly snoring nostrils. Your ears curled like cabbage. "That's a quick response after only fourteen hours," the nurse said after your hearing test. Your piano playing fingers. Those same fingers that cover an eye when distressed, or point when thoughtful. Your arm wrestler deltoids and indian wrestler legs. The same ones that kicked and punched their way through your dad's reading of Moby Dick and I, Robot during your gestation. Even your penchant for pooping and peeing in your mom and dad's hands.
A parent's love extends in every direction.
Your mom's head screams with love for you. Despite twenty three hours of natural labor, followed by three more of an epidural that uselessly drained into her legs. The anasthesiologist meant it when he said it was gravity driven. Your mom had refused to labor on her back. And still your mom's head screams with love for you, despite the "you don't want to know" (the RN's words) number of stitches the doctor sewed across second degree lacerations torn into her muscle tissue. Even the extra night spent in the birth center because you wouldn't pee. The nurses insisted your mom and dad stay until then, though they were dying to bring you home, dying to be home.
It amazes your dad that something capable of nothing beyond eating, sleeping and defecating is capable of so much more. He can think of nothing else than being with you. He wants to do nothing more than to do nothing with you.
