New Father
The wonder in his face is hard to get used to.
He was never an expressive man,
his favorite jokes marked only by a curt rush of air
through his nostrils, above lips pressed formally together,
never loose enough for a grin to escape.
Now, the word delight is fully realized
in how his whole body seems to smile,
bending towards the doorway like a flower to sunlight
when we go to visit him.
He does not seem to notice the gray
that slowly scrubs the brown from my hair,
the tracks of time snaking across my face.
The human brain is merciful sometimes,
ever creative, selectively blind,
to protect us from trauma.
“Honey, thank God you’re ok!”
My hands are clasped between his cold palms.
I always tell the staff to take him for walks, keep him active and healthy,
but he is usually too busy waiting.
“I got here as soon as I could.
They said you were recovering
after the surgery. How are you feeling?”
As soon as he is assured of my well-being,
his eyes flit back to the doorway.
“Where is she? I want to hold her.
Where’s my baby girl?”
I woke up that afternoon with my room full of sunlight.
They handed me my daughter,
told me my husband was here as a patient,
admitted six minutes after she was born.
An accident a mile from the hospital,
a massive head trauma.
They said, they did not know how bad it was yet.
They said, we will have to wait and see.
And, congratulations.
“Where is she? Where is our baby?”
My cheeks ache from the smile I stretch across my face
as I tell him she is being taken care of,
that she is beautiful and healthy and strong.
I lost count of the amount of times he met her
before she could no longer be mistaken for a newborn,
the times he looked briefly at his growing daughter
before asking when he could see her.
The conversation is always the same,
an unvarying, brief routine,
but is exhausting nonetheless.
Every so often he will ask why I do not share his excitement,
comment that I look tired
with more sympathy than I ever saw in him before.
He is frozen in a state of evolution,
and I am his reluctant witness,
watching as, every six minutes,
he becomes a father.