One night

I.
Only after the tornado had swept through did he dare go out in the night.  From the window he could see the rain boring down as cars cowered on the sides of the streets.  Cords of lightening marbleized the sky and flashed through the apartment, keeping his daughter from sleep.  After it was over the sidewalks were streaked with long isles of silt left by the overwhelmed storm drains.  But people were venturing out, and the strange tornado had passed.

II.
He met his two friends at the wine bar.  Above the din he could hear R&B songs he loved and knew well.  Occasionally voices would sing along with them.  The bar closed at a fairly early hour but they were still there as the tempo of the music picked up, as the bartender strutted behind the counter.  After the bottle of red was gone they ordered sangria.  This place made him feel sleek, that the people in the room were like the multitudes inside him.

III.
They went to another bar, smaller and emptier.  He found refuge in vodka.  One of his friends had to leave, but the two remained.  The bartender was an artist who had made the earrings she was wearing.  She wrote down the address of her blog on two scraps of paper for them.  At some moment, when the two friends were talking about old and sad topics, he had enough of those old and sad thoughts.  He ordered some shots and decided that they would stop talking about the matter when the drinks arrived.  So they downed the shots -- the bartender poured one for herself, too -- and moved on, and his happiness returned.  A girl behind him was dancing to Lady Gaga, her arms long above her head, her eyes closed, smiling.  "Don't call my name, don't call my name, Alejandro."  He felt such joy and love!  The liquor had served its purpose.  The music, the dancing, himself and his friend at the corner of this bar.  Her earrings. 

IV.
Now they were in an empty diner.  He ordered spaghetti to sober up.  He didn't have any cash and the place wouldn't take cards.  He walked carefully to an ATM two blocks away and withdrew some money.  When he returned his friend was low in the booth and it was time to leave.

V.
They were sitting on a bench in a median on Broadway.  Occasional white headlights coming forth, red taillights receding.  He closed his eyes to resolve himself, yet his mind pitched and rolled on its conflicting orbits.  The spaghetti returned, long and shining white on the soil.

VI.
He and his friend were walking up the street.  He suddenly realized that the darkness was paling, the sky softening into day.  He was embarrassed to see the morning come.  He wanted to be home.  He told his friend to get up, that now they should say goodbye and find a cab and abandon whatever was left of the night, before the light of a new day shamed him further.

VII.
He came home quietly into the gray light of the apartment.  His wife was on the sofa nursing their daughter.  She spoke softly, to avoid startling him, to welcome him back and to say good morning.

Back to the gym

Tonight I went to my first non-Sunday morning gym class in a very long time.  I checked out the New York Sports Club on 125th Street for the first time, after getting all of the relevant details from L.  Where is the entrance again?  What floor do you take the elevator to?  When you come out, where are the towels?  The locker room?  The water fountain?  The studio?

I am always nervous when I go to a gym for the first time.  I assume someone will pick on me.  I have been fortunate to have never really been bullied before (except in some unpleasant professional situations, maybe, and also L can really become quite merciless under the right circumstances) yet I always fear some towel-snapping juicehead is waiting to attack.  Like if I spend too much time loitering on the gym floor, or if my gym performance is somehow not up to par, some dude is going to come sauntering up: "Ha ha, check out the poindexter!  Let's do that thing where we flush his head in the toilet!"  To combat this I make a point of walking very purposefully around the gym, even when I have no idea where I'm going, just to prove to all of my would-be tormentors that I know what I'm doing.  As a result tonight I basically walked two pointless laps around the weight area, trying to look as calm as possible while my eyes were darting around furiously trying to find a water fountain.  If things really get bad, I will just stop wherever I am and do some stretches, trying to find a recognizable landmark before I break into a flop sweat.  I did this tonight, and that's how a guy with biceps the size of my beloved daughter's head almost walked into me as I was touching my toes.  But hey, at least I looked like I knew what I was doing.

Once I finished my Lewis & Clark-style reconnaissance, I did a couple of pleasant miles on the treadmill and went to a weight training class.  The class was much worse than I expected; the light weights I picked originally turned out to be too heavy, so I had to go back for even lighter ones.  And shortly after that I reached that wonderful point in the workout where I couldn't even bear to hold any weight at all, so I was doing the exercises empty-handed, like a mime, but with less dignity. 

Yet even as that was happening I was thinking how great it felt to be there.  I really like group exercise scenarios -- having someone else deciding what to do and leading a group of people all contributing to the tacit peer pressure to show up and perform.  The culture of the 125th street gym seemed to be really pleasant.  A nice mix of people, a lot of classes going on (a couple hip hop classes, two spin classes, a couple of weight classes).  I feel like I've given myself a pass from going to the gym since the baby was born -- I should be home, after all, bonding with Alice and taking the burden from L -- but I think I will be making more of an effort to get to the gym to recapture some of the stuff I loved about our old neighborhood.  I'm really glad it worked out tonight -- that I was able to get there and that no one gave me a noogie or challenged me to arm wrestle -- and I know I will be hurting tomorrow.

New TV

We have some really exciting news -- yesterday we got a new TV, one of them fancy flat-screen ones with the HD's.  We opted for the "Dynex" brand.  At first I thought Dynex was a new prescription drug I should ask my doctor about ("side effects may include dry mouth, chronic persperation, and nymphomania") but it turns out they just make TV's.  We spent a frustrating hour or so trying to get the screen resolution just right, trying to make sure our inputs were correct, comparing our zoom options, and checking to see that we weren't wasting our time on AV-2 when obviously we needed to be at HDMI-3.  What are we, farmers?

We christened our new television, which is the culmination of decades of innovation and technological breakthroughs and is designed to capture every individual raindrop, blade of grass, and glittering city light caught on camera, on a fantastically bad episode of "The Bachelorette."  I think the new TV heightened my own sense of shame and personal embarrassment on behalf of the participants, but otherwise it wasn't that different from normal, low-definition "Bachelorette."

What strikes me about this show is the weird cult mentality that seems to infect all the participants like a cold sore.   All of these people -- the bartenders, pharmaceutical representatives, teachers, lawyers, and medical equipment salespeople -- are linked along a sordid chain of previous contestants, starting with the Ur-Bachelor, who lived 3,000 years ago and rejected one contestant who went on to become the first Bachelorette, who in turn sent one of her cast-offs to be the next Bachelor, and on and on in perpetuity.   All of the participants reassure each other constantly that they are there for "the right reasons," such as serial making out and the opportunity to recreate pathetic school-girl fantasies of fairy tale romance.  And all of them aspire to be one of the lucky few who get to drag their chipper Bachelor or Bachelorette (with their telegenically capped teeth, angular jawbones, and classy hair extensions) back to their home towns, where their poor innocent family members have to spend a day ogling the couple and dividing into weird little interview clusters to talk about how all of them are all there for the right reasons.  It seems like a particularly exquisite hell to have to explain, justify and defend your make-believe-let's-pretend-TV relationship on camera to your grimacing parents, siblings, and in-laws.

All of this became much clearer thanks to the Dynex ("call your doctor if your retinal discoloration lasts longer than a week").  We have learned to fast forward through the actual date parts of the show, unless it looks like people are fighting.  Bring on the conflict!  Bring on the artifice!  Bring on the ugly cry!  These are the real right reasons to watch.

("...Please don't use Dynex if you're a werewolf.")

Independence Day weekend

We had a wonderful weekend.  But right now I am sitting at the table in our godforsaken apartment as the ceiling fan shoves great glaciers of hot air around the room and as beads of sweat gather at my temples.  It is so hot.  The heat bundles itself in these rooms and starts weighing down.  I expect the bed to buckle at any moment.  And it's 11 o'clock at night.

Friday:  We took the D and Q trains out to Brighton Beach and Coney Island.  Brighton Beach is the home of a large Russian population, and we ate lunch at a boardwalk Russian cafe, where we tried borscht for the first time.  Pretty darn good!  Like a weird gazpacho!  The quiet of Brighton Beach and the width of the boardwalk there reminded me of Rehoboth.  We walked across the hot sand to the water -- the sand of course being riddled with broken glass, because since this is New York City every nice thing must have an edge to it, which means that your typical idyllic beach will be liberally sprinkled with shrapnel -- and found the ocean to be freezing cold.  We continued up the way towards Coney Island, where we fought the urge to buy fried things and took in the spectacle.  I appreciated the history -- the parachute tower from the 1939 World's Fair, the amusement park rides from the same era.  Following our beach tradition, we had some photo booth pictures taken, and were happy to include Alice for the first time.  Later we ventured out onto the pier, passing fishermen and families and men cat-calling the women.  Looking back towards the beach, seeing the Wonder Wheel and the housing towers and the train snaking through it all, I was struck by the vastness of New York City.  Here we could feel ocean breezes, hear the caw of seagulls, see the wide blue sky over the water.  How many worlds, how many places this city contains.  (Walking along the beach, I was also struck by the sheer brazenness of people -- the  wildly inappropriate bathing suits, all those swathes of unrequested flesh -- that actually made me feel embarrassed for them, on their behalf, but I preferred to focus on the breadth of the City, thanks very much.)

Brighton Beach

Sunday: I started out Independence Day with a nice long run in the morning through Riverside Park.  As the heat settled on our skin and in our clothes, we walked down to Lincoln Center to watch a movie, baby in tow.  Here is our thinking: we did this last week with a matinee of "Toy Story 3," where the theater was empty and Alice was as well-behaved as one could reasonably expect.  L would jump out of her seat as soon as the baby started to fuss, and there was no issue.  Sunday we figured we would go see "Sex and the City 2: A Big Mistake" (see the pun there!) because (a) it's long, (b) it's playing in a place that's air-conditioned, and (c) everyone knows it's horrible, so no one will be there and it won't be a big deal with the baby.

Well, apparently the bitter old women of Manhattan did not get that memo, because they were out in full force.  Why were they seeing this movie everyone hated, six weeks after it originally came out?  Worst of all, the theater was configured in such a way that you entered by the movie screen, which means all the other patrons see you as you come in.  I could feel a collective wave of feminine disdain overtake us as we entered with our stroller, so we hustled to the back row to suffer the withering gaze of some freedom-hating old hag.  When I came back from getting popcorn, I actually took off the hat and sunglasses I had been wearing, so people wouldn't think I was the jerk who brought a baby to the movie.

But you know what, haters?  We did bring a baby, and she did great.  L had to take her out a couple times, and I had a few artificial coughing fits to camoflauge her gurgling, but she did great.  No crying. (We did note the fact that under normal circumstances, we would be part of the disdain brigade, harrumphing about how a movie theater is a completely inappropriate place to bring a baby, but thanks to the challenges of parenting and perhaps even a slight mellowing of my temper, perhaps I am evolving.)

Unfortunately, the movie was horrific.  It was really offensive against the middle east, and somehow the characters were even more insufferable than usual.  Why does Charlotte have a full-time nanny?  She doesn't have a job!  All the characters who were mothers sucked at it.  And their partners, the fathers, were simpering and spineless.  And the karaoke scene made me want to gouge my eyes out.  Other than that, two thumbs up!

We walked back to the piers on 125th Street and set up an impromptu picnic to see the fireworks.  We made friends with the sweet family to our left and watched the sunset sink across the Hudson.  The weather was perfect and the people were friendly, kids chasing each other and people eating sandwiches on their blankets.  When the fireworks started we found that our view was blocked by a clump of trees -- and then hundreds of people were shifting and jostling for a better view -- but at that point it didn't matter.

125th Street piers

Monday: Today I took my first Manhattan bike ride, after a morning stop at the local bike shop to outfit the old bike I had as a teenager, which has been dormant for about 15 years.  After pumping the tires, checking the brakes, and buying a helmet, this evening I rode down the Hudson to about 72nd Street and back.  I know it's no excuse for an actual workout, but it felt great to move, to force some air around me in the illusion of coolness.

This afternoon, after lunch, I took Alice home alone so that L could enjoy a small piece of the day.  The baby and I stayed in the cool oasis of her room. We read my favorite children's colonialist allegory, "The Story of Babar," as well as "Make Way for Ducklings," and a brief selection of "Moby-Dick," which she did not enjoy.  Then I was holding her in my lap, and we were both sitting there rocking, me relaxing in the cool air and quiet moment, feeling her weight on me, and the baby with the pacifier in her mouth, restful in my arms.  I looked at her and she was smiling sweetly, even with the pacifier, and then something happened and she was looking so clearly in my eyes, and smiling so broadly -- I started speaking to her and she would coo right in response, her mouth wide and open and happy, her eyes so intent on mine, laughing together.  At that moment I expected her to speak, to say my name or her own, or to tell a joke, or to laugh like her mother.  For a second she was not a baby, but my friend.  A brief moment of such connection.  During those moments I wouldn't have been surprised by anything.  It was so lovely.

Eventually it passed, and her adorable haze returned, clouding her thoughts, her needs.  But that moment!  My mysterious daughter.
 

It's been a wonderful weekend.  Now time for a last cold shower, and an escape into sleep, on top of the sheets, under the fans.

Things I'm afraid my daughter is thinking

1.  These people are idiots.

2.  Tummy time is bullshit. On my back! Put me on my back!

3.  The zoo-themed activity mat has become my personal hellscape.

4.  I wish they would take me to a Tea Party rally.  Comrade Nobama is a Socialist.

5.  I hate this apartment.

Father's Day

Father's Day!  All the self-absorption of birthdays, plus the expectation that relative strangers should acknowledge it!

There's more to it than that, of course.  If there's one thing parenthood points out to the recently initiated, it's that it's not about you anymore.  You are merely incidental to the arrival and progress of the child.  Heads snap away from you and turn towards the babe.  And that's all right.

I had a pretty darn good first Father's Day.  In the morning I woke up early to run a 5 mile race to benefit prostate cancer research.  It was hotter than hell, humid, sticky, and the run was unpleasant.  Sweaty shirt thwapping against my chest.  I took my time at the water breaks, took a few steps at mile 4 to regroup for the last push.  Even though my time wasn't particularly good, I was proud that I held up muscle-wise and breathing-wise -- it was just the heat that got to me, but that's always the case.

The highlight of the race was seeing Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY), an amiable, Biden-esque blowhard, who made a few remarks before the race started.  He also invited all of us to give him five as we started the race.  So I jogged over to the side of the pack and made my way to the good senator, who stood there with an open palm and a funny grin on his face as runners slapped him five and moved along.  I keep hoping someone will ask me, "Hey, have you high-fived any U.S. senators this week?", but as usual people are pretty self-absorbed and nobody seems too interested.

The rest of the day continued along this plateau of excellence.  My brilliant wife gave me a Chipotle gift card, earmarked for exclusive use when I'm enjoying some alone time.  Alice gave me a "Hop On Pop" pop-up book, and L even manipulated her tight little fists so that she "signed" the card and labeled the envelope.  It was wonderful.  Here she is signing the card:

We went downtown for lunch at Stand, walking through the soupy air with the baby strapped on my chest like a totem of parenthood.  A nice lady on the subway wished me happy father's day.  We stopped at the bookstore and they were very kind about it, too.  After we made our way back home I escaped to Chipotle by myself for a little bit, enjoying fountain Coke and reading Dave Eggers' "Zeitoun."  Along my walk I listened to Drake's "Find Your Love," which is quickly becoming my song of the summer, and thought about my great good fortune.

For dinner L made me salmon, asparagus, macaroni and cheese, and salad.  We had a little bit of ice cream for dessert.  We watched some television.  And eventually we went to bed in our sweltering apartment, the ceiling fans spinning in their taut, chaotic orbits, the curtains billowing inwards with gusts of warm night air and the dull regular groan of the train, lying under thin cotton sheets, listening for any cries from the baby's room, anticipating another day of heat, of family, of a baby.  It's a new kind of summer.

Biggest losers

We are on a new fitness initiative in this house.  For several weeks now, L and I have been tackling our new goal: to lost the baby weight that we have accumulated in the last few months.  I face the added challenge of not only addressing the baby weight I gained through pure sympathy, but also the law firm weight I acquired during those last few months of whatever happened to be going on.

Saturday mornings are weigh-in time, when we do it Biggest Loser-style.  "M, last week your weight was X.  Your current weight is...beep beep beep...Y."  Then we write it down on the notepad and decide how we feel about the week's progress.  This week, for instance, I'm rebounding from nearly a week spent in a conference at North Carolina.  There I spent many days eating industrial foods and sitting in overly air-conditioned hotel ballrooms.  I also ate, for the first time, melon wrapped in prosciutto.  The melon was really wet and moist, and the prosciutto was partly flapping off, and when I put the whole damn thing in my mouth I about gagged from the sensation that there was a jellyfish in my mouth.   It was one of the grossest things I've ever eaten.  I've never felt so betrayed by prosciutto. 

This week went better as far as exercise goes -- I fit some good runs in there -- but I experienced a bit of self-sabotage.  One night, after we finished dinner, I ate three slices of pizza because otherwise they would have gone bad.  Another night was date night, so dinner was a platter of meats and cheeses with a glass of wine, followed by movie popcorn and Coke.  Also, L brought home a pint of real Haagen Dazs ice cream -- Dark Chocolate Mint -- because (1) it had all of my favorite things in it and (2) it's a limited edition.  A limited edition!  How could we not eat it?

It must be said, though, that we have actually taken some concrete steps to get back on the straight and narrow that I am pretty proud of.  First, I have cut out most of the soda I usually drink.  Instead of a can of Coke at lunch, plus assorted Cokes throughout the evenings and weekends, I'm now drinking Canada Dry seltzer water, which is like normal water but angrier, and also vaguely flavorful.  Despite the tepid flavoring, I find seltzer to be very aggressively carbonated -- way bubblier than Coke.  I imagine that seltzer has so much carbonation because it's pissed at how tepid its flavors are.  The lemon-lime version tastes like the faintest, vaguest memory of Sprite, and yet it's got enough carbonation to take the skin off the roof of your mouth.  And yet that's a balance I can live with.  Now I come home and think, "oh boy, could I use a seltzer!"  But hey, it has no sodium and no calories, so why the heck not.  Each day I'm saving at least 140 calories from that Coke I'm not drinking.  Second, we've exchanged our ice cream for frozen yogurt (for the most part), which makes me feel virtuous, even though the texture makes me think I'm eating hunks of ice from a glacier.  And third, I'm doing better with exercising consistently.  I am running again, a couple runs a week for 5 miles apiece, down the Hudson River.  It feels great and I can definitely feel my stamina improving already.

Even though the results of our weight loss initiative are slow and often disappointing, I'm feeling healthier and more active.  Tomorrow I'm running a 5 mile Father's Day race to benefit prostate cancer research -- it will be my first road race in over a year, I think, and I'm pretty nervous about it.  These days I'm not used to the hills of Central Park, although I am convinced that my muscle memory endures after all the training I used to do there.  Hopefully the run will go well -- I ran today and I took it easy, but my legs still felt heavy and weak -- and then I can make it through the rest of the week without eating like a lunatic.

To be honest I'm not really concerned with actual weight loss; it's more about reestablishing a more active, balanced lifestyle, and putting in place some good habits to counteract a slower metabolism as I enter a whole new decade of life.  This can't be one of those things where ever year I get a little slower, a little more out of breath, a little paunchier.  Not yet at least.

Parks and recreation

We had a great Memorial Day weekend.  The weather was sunny and clear, the throngs of people abated, and we had three days that reminded us why we love living here.

Saturday: With Alice strapped into the Baby Bjorn on my chest, giving me the opportunity to develop new and unexpected constellations of sweat over the course of a long hot Saturday, we walked all the way from 125th Street to Lincoln Center, in the low 60s, and back -- for a nice urban hike of six miles.  On the way down I was constantly aware of heads turning to stare at the baby, women gushing and cooing over her cuteness.  As parents, we tried to respond modestly ("oh, thank you" with a demure smile) but eventually gave way to bald-faced honesty ("yes, she is!").

One highlight of the day was exploring the new developments at Lincoln Center.  I am constantly amazed by the renovations I'm seeing throughout the city during these lean years.  Where is the money coming from?  Who decides that now is the time to invest in public art and topiary sculptures?  I have no idea, but I'm thankful someone is deciding this.  The most exciting thing at Lincoln Center is a new parabolic lawn -- a sloping wafer of green that serves as the rooftop of a new restaurant and curves upwards to audacious peaks overlooking the streets below.  The edges are lined with glass or metallic fencing, creating unexpected promontories with their own peaks and swells.  It is remarkable.

They've added a lot of other exciting stuff there, too, including the elegantly powerful new fountain, ringed by a sleek black bench; a new grove of trees with plenty of chairs and benches; and an intriguing shallow pool intersecting with a sloping, warmly-colored plaza.  In The Death and Life of Great American Cities, Jane Jacobs pointed to Lincoln Center as an example of bad urban planning: a broad, single-use space, devoid of foot traffic and isolated in its cold grandeur.  It seems that some smart people have heeded her critique; every new development I saw seemed designed to create a richer, more livable, more welcoming space.  And they are succeeding.

Sunday:  On Sunday L and Alice met me at the gym downtown after a good workout.  Once I emerged from the locker room, all fresh and clean, L put Alice in my arms (which were shaking at that point, due to the rigor of the workout).  A few minutes later I handed the baby back and L looked at me and said, with the kind of sneer I thought we were no longer using in marital conversation, "Are you still sweating?" I looked down at the oblong stain on my shirt.  I smelled it.  "No, she peed on me."  So we ended up going to the Gap to buy a new shirt for me to wear for the day.  Thanks a lot, Alice.

Later we made our way back to the park on the Hudson, where we read and people-watched and let Alice nap on the blanket.  We saw a few reality show celebrities and plenty of people who had clearly been working out for months and months just to be ready on the first plausibly shirtless day of summer.  It was a good reminder of the pros and cons of living in the Village.

Monday: Today I cleaned out my computer, which gave me a disproportionate sense of accomplishment.  And in the evening I went for a run along on the Hudson, on the new route I've found for myself: taking the path on the waterfront from 125th to the 79th Street Boat Basin and back. It's about five miles, and the path hugs the shoreline the entire time (a few sections are next to the West Side Highway, but it's easy enough to focus on the water -- on the boats bobbing along the piers, or the bridge standing tall in the distance).  The path is organized so that pedestrians are on one side, regardless of which direction you are travelling in, and bikers and Rollerbladers are relegated to the other side.

Today there were a ton of bikers in my lane, which posed a problem.  Do I fall off on to the shoulder, and risk stumbling into the inhospitable water of the Hudson?  Or do I bolt into the wrong lane myself, thus perpetuating the original transgression?

I approached the dilemma with the same passive-aggressive, slow-boil approach that has served me so well in the past.  As the bikers came barreling towards me, at first I did nothing. Then I gave one of my tried and true Dirty Looks.  Then I threw up my hands in a gesture of disgust.  Then I started saying, "you're in the wrong lane."  Finally I was confronted with a knot of idiot bikers, coming at me at the same time as the other side of the path was clogged with others.  I had nowhere to go.  "WRONG LANE!"  I said, a few times.  One chick in a sundress and bike helmet actually had to sort of stumble off her pedals to catch the bike with her feet to avoid hitting me.  I ended up maybe six inches from her handlebars.  "WRONG LANE," I pointed out.  "Sorry -- where was I supposed to -- the bike," she explained, but not very nicely.  "You should be in the other lane, that's for bikes," I said, doing my best to explain the clear symbols and words that were paved on the surface of the path in numerous locations.  I mean, Excuse Me New York.  I concluded the conversation with that sound you make when you're huffy and catch the air in the back of your throat in something that's halfway between a sigh and a grunt -- if you've ever talked to me in person you know what I'm talking about -- and that was it.

All in all, a great weekend.  I love this city.

Dodge Caravan

We left Virginia around 3 p.m. yesterday, L behind the wheel of our rental Dodge Caravan, to return to New York after a weekend of visiting family with the baby. Due to traffic and the unyielding demands of an infant, it took us eight hours to get home. Because of tiresome rental car bureaucracies, L was the only one who could drive the car, so I spent a lot of time in the middle row, shushing A or rocking her car seat or holding a hand against her torso to remind her that human contact existed, even on the hellish eight-hour journey on which we had embarked.

At one point the baby started shrieking, so we pulled off at a random exit on 95 and wended our way down a couple more interstates until we found a place to park and get a soda. We ended up stopping for fifty minutes in some no-name town in Delaware, or maybe Maryland, or maybe Ohio, where there was nothing but strip malls, so the baby could eat and please stop screaming. The only fast food places were a Dunkin' Donuts and a Quizno's, which seemed like the result of some very bad zoning choices. We sat for almost an hour in the Quizno's parking lot, doors open, feeling the pleasant Delaware (or possibly Ohio) breeze brush up from the asphalt and waft through the minivan. I wondered where we were -- who lives here? In the Quizno's the woman ahead of me was wearing a t-shirt from a sociology club at a high school I had never heard of. When I was getting our drinks at the soda fountain, I overheard the teenage girl behind me explaining to her mother that "if you put too much ice in the cup, it fills the space the soda is in," or something equally weird. Where were we?

We spent another five hours on the road after that, listening to country radio and stuttering down the highway into a sea of constant taillights. The sun melted into the scrim of clouds and the temperatures dropped around us. We had to stop at another rest stop when the baby pooped with such volume and force that it eked out the side of her diaper and onto the car seat, and, on the front end, almost reached her belly button. When we realized this we were five miles from a rest stop, so I had to spend the interval patiently explaining to my daughter why she should sit quietly in her poopy diaper and car seat. "BE QUIET AND SIT IN THE POOP CHAIR," was my main argument. At that rest stop her pacifier dropped and bounced underneath the minivan. We sat there for a while, watching angry and frustrated people clamber out of their cars and into the Woodrow Wilson Service Area for some restorative Whoppers and Frappucinos.

Eventually we inched our way through New Jersey and alongside the cold glittering skyline of the city. The raucous lights of Tenth Avenue and Amsterdam seemed calm and welcoming after the long, long trip. Today the baby has been fussy and L and I have been exhausted. It will be good to be home for a little while.

Daddy time

My dear Alice,

Today is your one-month birthday! It's hard to believe you've been with us for only a month now. It seems as though you have always been here -- always cooing and grunting from the bassinet, or arching your arms over your head at the slightest stimuli, or slowly opening your big brown eyes to begin to take in the world. And yet it's only been a few weeks.

So far, I think things are going well. You have a sweet and calm side that is almost unbearably endearing. I love it in the mornings when you are calm enough to lie on my chest peacefully, eyes open, rising and falling with my breath and staring at your mother a few feet away in the bed. It's so encouraging to see you awake and alert and quiet, observant, so that your mommy and I can show you the world and how we make our way in it, so you can begin to understand.

Since I have to spend much of the day at work, I always try to make sure I imprint on you well enough so that you'll know me. Most times when I pick you up I helpfully say, "It's DADDY! DADDY TIME!" to clarify what exactly my role is. I do not provide food (usually), but I am adept at changing diapers, and I will say that I am quite good at soothing you. Swaddle you up, shush aggressively, jiggle you to and fro, stick in a pacifier and you should be nice and quiet in a few minutes. Sometimes Mommy will be holding you and jiggling you, and I will be standing next to her, shushing loudly and bouncing up and down on my knees like an idiot. But do you know why I do it? Because I'm Daddy. And it's Daddy Time.

To be honest, there are challenging times as well: your tradition of unconquerable fussiness between, say, 8 and 10 p.m. is annoying, and I sometimes take it personally. It's also uncool when we change your diaper, and then moments later you release a massive poop. Do you understand that diapers cost money, and that you are wasting both? Frankly, Mommy and I are getting sick of your sense of entitlement.

Other than that, daughter of mine, you are wonderful. If I could rewind the clock back to one month ago, and spend all that time telling you every way and how much we love you, it wouldn't nearly be enough. On my desk at work I have a photo of your mother from our trip to Hanoi, in Vietnam, before we knew you (yet not before we dreamed of you) and right next to it is a picture of you, looking cute and beseeching and dignified on the changing table. You guys are my favorites.

Happy birthday, little blabe--

love,

Daddy

Just because I love this photo

Ready to go, my love!

Surfacing

Now that our girl A is about to celebrate her three-week birthday, I feel like I am surfacing once again to look around and take a breath. I haven't been blogging in the last few weeks -- haven't been doing much of anything, really. Not a lot of emails going in or out, not writing anything, not a lot of phone calls or Facebook stuff, not even finishing The New Yorker. I haven't been on the subway in a week, since we rarely leave the neighborhood these days. Our universe only extends as far south as 110th street, as far west as Riverside Park. As far north as Duane Reade. As far east as Central Park.

These are not complaints, though. Ever since A arrived we have enjoyed this insular period as a time to recalibrate our ideas of love and family, and to welcome somebody new into the most basic unit of who L and I are and how we live. It's been so pleasant, and so simple, to think of little more than L and A. Ever since A came home everything else in the world has felt distanced and glazed over.  Stories in the news, reality TV exploits, pressing articles on issues I should care about, all seem relatively weightless when compared with the reality of this miraculous baby we've got on our hands.

So far I am really enjoying having A around. She is getting on a nice three-hour cycle of feeding, hanging out, and sleeping. Her arm movements are spastic yet endearing. Her eyes are full and alert now, she is gaining some plumpness in her limbs and belly, and she is working so hard to lift her big old head to take everything in. She settles easily with the pacifier (usually) and she can spend hours lying on your chest or in your arms, as long as her own hands and arms are free to flail about in whatever way her blazing little brain commands. In the mornings she is so calm and lovely. And today she pooped on my shirt for the first time. That was a funny moment, almost as funny as earlier today when L managed to drop an entire container of grapes on the living room floor, forcing us to shove the furniture around to retrieve all the gnarly, dirt-crusted grapes, now looking like unappetizing truffles, from under the couch.

Anyways, before A was born I was curious about how I would feel about her: Is it love at first sight? Does the floor drop out from under you? Like the rest of this experience, it hasn't been nearly as dramatic or sudden. Instead, it felt more like this new paternal love arrived full and complete at the same moment she did, that I turned around one moment and found that my life had a new foundation, solid and impenetrable. There was a new given, a new creed: love my wife, love my daughter. The idea of loving A was as obvious and undeniable as the fact of her own existence.

The Judges' Save

The first night at home with A was kind of rough.  There were three of us sleeping in that room, my wife and me in the bed and our baby in the co-sleeper beside us.  Now I had two faces to seek, two breaths to listen for.  We were ready to leap up in response to her cries, and we spent the whole night lurching violently into wakefulness whenever she pierced our sleep.  L had it worse than me, obviously, but I was up with her changing diapers and offering my sincere if groggy moral support.  Yet when I returned to bed my mind would start scraping against grim thoughts: worries about my daughter and her health, doubts in our (my) ability to raise her right, numberless questions I can't answer.  It seems like having a kid opens up new depths of love in your life, but that intense love is equally matched by worry.  I was thankful when the sun came up and we could rejoin the day, banishing our doubts to the night and leaving behind fitful dreams of babies' cries.  

The second night at home was better.  We knew what to expect and L mercifully let me sleep through a few rounds.  The funny part, though, occurred earlier.  During the entire period of A's existence -- that is, since Monday -- I have been surprisingly unemotional about all of the joyful ruptures in our old life.  Last night we were watching the results show on "American Idol," and according to their rules, when someone gets the lowest number of votes, they can perform one last time and the judges have the opportunity -- which they may use at their discretion and may only apply once during the entire season -- to reinstate that person in the competition.  This is called "the Judges' Save."

Well, last night, soul singer contestant Michael Lynche, who I really like, got the lowest number of votes.  He had one last chance to perform for the judges in the hopes of winning the Judges' Save, so Michael Lynche started singing "This Woman's Work," a song that I have loved for a long time, a song about pregnancy and and childbirth and womanhood and love and devotion and commitment, and I was sitting there listening to it, and I watched the judges conferring among themselves in the foreground of the screen, and then I started thinking about the Oprah Winfrey interview with Tracy Morgan that we had watched a little earlier, where she said that every man has a dream for his family, and then Michael Lynche was finishing his song, filling every single breath with all the passion and desire he could muster as his wife bawled in the front row, and then the song was over, and the judges were whispering, and Ryan Seacrest silenced the crowd, and Michael Lynche stood there like some testament to fatherhood itself, and then the judges bantered, and then they said -- Michael Lynche had won the Judges' Save!  He was still in the competition!  The audience erupted.  And at that point, dear reader, I lost my shit and started to cry.  I hadn't shed a single tear since A was born, and now here I was crying all over the place on the couch next to L.  We started laughing immediately.  "What am I doing?"  I said, pointing at my face.  "Why the heck am I crying?"  I said.  But I was still crying.

"He got the Judges' Save," I said through my tears and snot.  "I'm so happy he got the Judges' Save."

The day you were born

This is the story of the day A was born. In case you haven't heard, A is our new daughter, born today. Objectively speaking, she is extremely cute. Her nose and lips and ears are small and perfect. She has a funny hairline. Her skin smells warm and fresh. She has deep, milky eyes. She usually has a very placid demeanor, and she reacted to her first diaper change with an air of dignified resignation. When she sleeps her arms fly akimbo and her fingers grasp for something we can't know. Her first life lesson today appeared to be, "It's OK to sneeze." Her first sneeze resulted in tears; by the end of the day she could handle it, while her parents rejoiced at the chance to bless their lovely daughter once again.

But before A realized that sneezing was ok, she had to get born first. Here is what happened. It's rated PG-13 for language and stressful situations.

The original plan was for us to head into the hospital to induce labor around 9 pm tonight. We went to bed last night expecting to spend the day waiting for nighttime to roll around so we could swing into action. Consequently, I slept late, and woke up around 9 to find L anxiously pacing through the apartment. She was having contractions, and had started writing down their times. The contractions were lurching along at irregular intervals: ten minutes, twelve, seven, eleven. I briskly showered and ate breakfast and got ready for something. The contractions intensified; L was in pain. Around 10:15 we called the doctor. I explained what was happening. "She's in labor, come on down to the hospital," they said. Okay.

Except that L couldn't come to the hospital -- she was in too much pain to leave the bathroom, let alone the apartment. She was in agony and was making the kind of sounds you don't ever want to hear from a loved one. I expected her to emerge from the bathroom crazed with rage and pain, Hulk-like, like she had been ripping the linoleum out with her fingertips. After a half hour of cajoling and pleading (including one false start) I lured her out of the apartment. She was moaning in the elevator. Outside I dashed through the crosswalk, hauling our three bags of hospital-bound stuff, as L clutched her body and slowly made her way. People were looking at us but not saying anything. I ran back to get her and hailed a cab. I loaded everything up but the cabbie said, "Wait, does she need help?" L couldn't make it through the crosswalk. I guided her to the car and we got in. Before she stepped in the car, though, my delicate orchid of a wife said those magic words that every prospective father longs to hear: "I'm going to poop in the cab." "That's ok!" I said. After slinking through a few stoplights I asked the cabbie to take the West Side Highway, to make sure we could get all the way to St. Vincents Hospital, down on 12th street. We had almost 100 blocks to go.

In the cab L's contractions started out at about two and a half minutes apart. L was gasping, moaning, yelling out, arching her back and clutching onto the handrest or window frame so hard that her muscles would tremble with her pain. And then her contractions started coming at two minutes apart. During those brief intervals I would pray that we could somehow advance 40 blocks before the next wave, but L had to suffer through each crashing wave as we slowly made our way south. Later, I would laugh that she also seemed to be having a mild Tourettic episode. "Breathe through it, honey," I would meekly suggest. "FUUUUUUUCK," she would reply. Or I would helpfully say, "Just breathe, my darling," and then she would say, "SHIIIIIIIIT." It was a useful dialogue.

Finally, an eternity later, we made it to the hospital. It was around 11 o'clock. L got out and shuffled inside as I stayed back to pay. She hadn't pooped in the cab. Our angelic driver had turned the meter off early so we could dash out quickly, and he helped us get our bags from the trunk. I gave him a massive tip. We shook hands and he wished us luck. I kind of wanted to give him a hug. As we went in, someone else called out, "Congratulations!"

We made it up another elevator to the labor and delivery floor. L held on to me, buckled over, as I explained our situation to the nurses. They ushered us into a delivery room and a nurse checked L out. "Shit, there's the head," the nurse said. Our midwife, Barri, appeared, and there was a flurry of activity as they raised the bed and got L in the position to push, summoning forth piles and piles of covers and blankets and protective gloves. "What about an epidural?" I said. "There's no time -- the head is here -- it's time to push."

I started to laugh. What the hell was going on? According to our birth plan (which explicitly stated that the baby was to be born over a week ago), we were going to have a nice, easy birthing experience, including an epidural and a veritable rainbow of the pharmaceutical industry's finest painkillers. Now we had the midwife telling us there was no time, that we would just have to push through an all-natural, granola, hippie-dippie birthing experience. Well, stop the Joan Baez CD, I'd like to get off. L and I looked at each other and laughed at how things always happen to us in the craziest possible way. This was it. I was so proud of her. At that moment, stepping off the brink together, I loved her so much.

Three or four pushes later -- at 11:19 am, less than fifteen minutes after we arrived at the hospital -- our daughter was born. She arrived a bawling tangle of blue limbs, plopped on L's belly as the midwife and nurses performed their ministrations. Our girl. A few minutes later I cut the cord, and made the nurses laugh when I said it felt like a scallop. We all laughed at the utter irrelevance of our birth plan and all of our expectations. We thought about how close we came to giving birth in a taxicab. And we would have, probably, but for a few short minutes.

We spent the rest of the day holding her, feeding her, gazing at her, taking pictures of her, speaking with loved ones all over the country and the world, and introducing Hank and John and Anna to our girl. I left to get some lunch in the afternoon and ran into an old neighbor, as well as our friends at the bookstore and Chipotle. Everyone was so warm, so happy for us -- L and A and me, our little family. It felt like a holiday in our city. What a blessing. What a tremendous blessing.

Good news

Our baby has arrived!

Alice Lee

April 5, 2010

11:19 a.m.

6 lbs., 13 oz.

20 inches

L and A are doing great. My cup runneth over.

Due date

Today, March 30, is the baby's due date. Obviously, given the nature of our active yet fickle little child, nothing is happening. I woke up this morning feeling like Christmas, feeling like my day had finally arrived. We have been waiting for the last weeks of March to roll around since late June, 2009. All of the holidays and hurdles that separated us from our baby -- including the holiday seasons, all of fall and winter, trips up and down the Atlantic seaboard, a move to a new apartment uptown, the end of one job and the start of another -- have come and gone. And the trophy for our patience and fortitude is L's big and glorious belly.

Rationally I knew there was no reason to expect the kid to arrive today. It's not like she received the memo that March 30 was her assigned date. In fact, less than 5% of babies are born on their actual due dates (most, especially for first-time mothers, are born after the due date). Yet I couldn't help but hope that our kid would come barreling into life on the early side. To be early is to be on time, after all. She should know that already.

So now we are winding down another day free of labor and delivery. Maybe tonight will be the night L wakes up to a strange yet not entirely unwelcome new pain. Maybe tonight, but probably not. L is convinced we will be having an April baby, and that makes sense to me.

...But it could be tonight! It's March 30, our due date! Our Christmas!

Then and now

Last night I sent a photo to some family and friends featuring me modeling all of the university-branded swag I received on my first day of work:

My parents quickly responded, to the entire group, with a photo of me on my first day of pre-school, 28 years ago.   I concede that there may be some similarities:

Two thoughts occurred to me: I am touched that my parents can remember such small, ancient moments. And I can't wait to similarly humiliate my kid in another thirty years.

Transitions/champagne

Last week was my final week at the law firm. On Thursday they surprised me, and another attorney who was about to go on maternity leave, with a champagne toast to celebrate our new milestones. All week long I heard a lot of kind words from partners, associates, and staff, which really meant a lot to me. On Friday, I labeled all of my files for storage and cleared the last lingering items from my inbox, and then sent my farewell email late in the afternoon. I talked about how I felt grateful for the opportunity to work with, and learn from, all of these colleagues. The final lesson, though, the thing that surprised and heartened me, was the warmth of the goodbyes and the sincerity (or so it seemed) of their best wishes for the new job and the new baby. I was really touched.

On Friday afternoon, around 4:30, it seemed like there was nothing else to do. My stuff was all packed up, my desk was empty, and the usual stream of emails and phone calls had dried up. So I packed up my bag, left my security cards on my desk, and said goodbye to the two grinning partners who had been hanging around my office. I gave my secretary a hug. I said a few quick goodbyes as I waited for the elevator one last time. Although there were moments when I felt very ambivalent about leaving this position, this feeling would always burn off in a dawning sense of excitement and relief for the next chapter. Once I got to the lobby I put on my headphones, selected "Imma Be," and strutted out into the clear spring evening.

Today was my first day at my new job, at the university. I saw many old friends and had some promising conversations with people who seemed warm and friendly and personable. In the afternoon there was a champagne toast to welcome me to the office. They said how excited they were that I was there. The differences between this work environment and my previous one are many, although I can't say that one is objectively better than the other. But after this first day I am feeling very confident in the decisions I've made, and grateful for the new opportunities before me. It's exciting to enter a new environment, a new culture, with a new mission to guide you. And the fact that all of my comings and goings have been punctuated by these champagne parties -- I have discovered a new depth of my gratitude, for working with kind and gracious people who have been so warm and welcoming to me.

There were three big things I had to wrangle this spring: End the old job. Start the new one. Those two are basically taken care of. Now there's only one thing left.

Not yet

This morning I was at my desk, waiting to hear back from L about her trip to the sonogram place to check on the baby's growth. Around 11:30 she called me on my office phone. When I picked up I could hear her laughing to someone else, so I thought everything was fine. "I'm in a cab to the hospital," she said. "The baby's heart rate was low, so they want to hook me up to a fetal heart rate monitor." The doctors had told her that I should meet her at the hospital. A nurse had walked L out of the office to make sure she could catch a cab to St. Vincents downtown.

I had a conference call at 12, and was supposed to attend a hearing at 2. Everything was different now. I emailed a few attorneys and my secretary to tell them I had to go to the hospital. At first I tried to be discreet but I couldn't find the words so I said exactly what was happening. I didn't care who knew. My wonderful secretary came to my doorway and helped me think of things I needed. We decided I should take the subway. I gathered a few work items, grabbed my lunch and the New Yorker, my headphones. "You know, this could be it," I said.

I was so nervous I got out at the wrong subway stop, walking briskly up 7th Avenue in my ill-fitting dress shoes at a clip that made my lower legs ache. St. Patrick's Day revelers were everywhere, laughing and plodding along in their stupid green t-shirts. A lot of green Yankees paraphernalia and orange wigs. In the hospital I remembered how to get to Labor & Delivery, but I had to stop at two different nurse's stations to find L. I thought of the other times I had made similar trips, navigating an unknown hospital to find my wife hidden in some small undistinguished room.

She was lying on her side in a hospital gown, a nest of tubes and wires snaking out from her belly. The room was filled with the constant, reassuring thrum of the baby's heartbeat. She was smiling. Everything seemed to be fine.

We sat there for almost two hours, as doctors and nurses came in and agreed that things seemed perfectly normal. We watched a little bit of TV: some CNN, some TLC, the "Full House" episode where Michelle learns to tie her shoes and Uncle Jesse admits he never graduated high school and decides to go back. It wasn't as poorly written and un-funny as I feared it would be; it wasn't bad at all, except for the unnervingly intimate close-ups. I've never seen a sitcom with such tight close-ups. It was like "60 Minutes" or something.

Ultimately they discharged us; L got dressed and we staggered back out into the day. A part of me had hoped this would be it, that the day would end with a baby. But I suspected we would probably just head on home. The doctors concluded that the low heart rate had been a fluke: maybe L had been sitting in a weird way, maybe the baby had been squeezing the cord or something. Who knows. Nothing to worry about.

We stopped at the bookstore visit with our friends, and ate lunch at Subway. We both returned to work rattled. I had a couple of beers at the office's St. Patrick's Day happy hour, organized my personal emails and eventually went to hip hop. Class was great tonight; we had a sub, and he was doing really intricate, asymmetrical stuff, based on the California style of krumping. Then I came back home to see my pregnant wife and wind down this day.

Now at day's end, I'm glad we were able to go through a dry run of things. L told me she had initially gone to the wrong floor of the hospital. Now she knows which floor to go to, and I know which subway stop to take.

On my subway ride down to the hospital, I had started to get excited. If the baby was going to be born today I could just wear my suit at the hospital for the next few days, my nice starched shirt getting wrinkled and soft after a couple days of broken sleep. This necktie would always remind me of the day my daughter was born. The work I brought would have gone untouched, but I might have read the New Yorker. We didn't have a lot with us, but it would have been enough.

There was that sense, riding the train down to see my wife and my daughter, that this could be it. The question kept rising in my mind, and the realization that there was no wrong or bad answer made me revel in the asking: Why not today? Why not right now?

Eventually, soon, we can answer. But not today.

Pull the trigger

Today I resigned from my job. This was a long time coming. Last night I received word that my new job had come through, that I had found a place to land. I was nervous to tell the folks at work that I would be leaving, and that I would be leaving the firm to work at a university in a non-lawyerly way. I expected them to snicker and say that I could never make it as a lawyer, and that now I was tucking my tail between my legs and slinking off to a different and easier world.

Obviously no one said this. They were actually very supportive, and very surprised. They even said they'd miss me. I told a bunch of different people today, basically relating the same narrative of opportunity, decision, and commitment, and the reactions varied: some were shocked, or aghast, or euphoric, or proud, or even jealous. And they all wished me well.

The foundation below the happiness and relief I felt today, though, was a sense of my own autonomy. Seeking out this new opportunity, winning it and committing to it reminded me that I am a free man. Not on anyone else's track, with no one to answer to but my family; my choices are my own. And I'm making them.

To be honest, I hadn't felt this strong and burly and in control and convinced that I'm the man since I found out I knocked up L. Today I felt proud of myself for finding a way out of an untenable situation, and for finding a new opportunity that is better-suited for my family and me. I was also thinking that this is how life is -- choices and consequences, transitions and opportunities. All of it in the service of a vision that is growing clearer every day.

Looking ahead: my last day of work is next Friday the 19th. My first day at the new job is Wednesday the 24th. And this baby girl of ours is due around Saturday the 27th. At this point the only thing I'm sure of is that all of my careful little plans will most likely be blown to bits, whenever this kid decides to make her entrance. And that's all right too.