11 years ago today I was laying with a nice fat stomach in a balmy bedroom on a lake in central Florida (Oklawaha, to be exact). Barry was working on a horror movie, and not even my husband, just the Guy. I woke up at 4 in the morning feeling a little crampy. So I ate a popsicle. Wandered around our little rented lake house.
I think I'm in labor, I thought. But never having been in labor, I waited to tell Barry.
A few hours later, I was definitely in labor. We drove the AD's borrowed truck (of course it would be Nathan being born, his last ride to the hospital in a truck) and got to go to the Munroe Regional Medical Center where we had toured and seen all the newborn red wrinkly babies through the nursery window. I didn't want any of those babies. I just wanted the one I was currently growing.
Couldn't wait to see that baby.
Of course everyone's read the book and knows the story of Nathan's birth - I highly recommend having a baby while on vacation in Florida. I'd only been there a few weeks, spent alot of time watching "Unsolved Mysteries" reruns on Lifetime (I love Bob Stack) and hanging out in the alligator lake in the humidity with dogs Jed and Maise. Bruce was 16. I was a youngster, too.
Anyway, so there we were, Nathan slithered out to hang with us in that life changing hospital room where I stopped sleeping and started caring for my little baby boy. He started out much smaller and gentler than you'd think if you saw the current massive Nathan. He fit in the crook of my arm.
I told the kids in the car tonight on the way home from Poppa's, that having kids is the greatest thing that can ever happen to you. Even with all the yelling. They're amazing because there is nothing like them in the world, you can't make another, they are walking and talking and laughing and feeling creations from nowhere, from clouds and atoms and spirit. No technology made Nathan. He's just love, walking around in my shoes. (That he fits now.)
ps. Nathan 11 yrs ago: liked milk, watching people and sleeping
Nathan now: likes hot Cheetos, riding bikes, watching people build stuff
