A letter to my son on his first birthday.

Dear Jackson,
What can I say? It has been a wonderful, terrifying year. You have become such a light in my life, I can't even describe it. A year ago today, as your mother lay in the hospital bed awaiting your arrival, I was nervous. Constantly wringing my hands and drinking massive amounts of Dr. Pepper, smoking like a chimney, and peeing every 3 minutes or so. I didn't eat or sleep. All of this due to my anxiety not about having a kid, because I was resigned to, and actually looking forward to that, but about being a father and about your mom's well being. She was in labor for a long long time, and when the doctor told us that you were just too big to come out, and that struggling to do so was taking it's toll, I got a new level of anxiety added on because now a major surgery was going to be involved. There is a lot that the father can't do during both the pregnancy and the birth. I felt a little helpless. I could not truly sympathize, and I couldn't really help. All I could do was watch. Boy did that change.
After the paper suit, the waiting in the hall for an eternity watching my own hair turn gray, the hot spots, the too much anesthetic, the extra big hole, the massive amounts of blood, the really weird man who kept going on about how he wears a different ball cap every day instead of concentrating on what he was doing, the doctors handed you to me. I didn't know what you were going to look like, but now I can't think of any other way that you could. I felt such amazing joy at seeing you, and such sheer terror at what they had done to my poor wife, that my brain shut down and I just stared at the wall for a while, just to make sure there was something concrete and real in the world. Then Jen asked to see you, and she touched you with such tenderness through the haze of drugs. Then they whisked me with you in my arms to the nursery, where I spent another long while watching them poke and prod you. Then they wrapped you up like a burrito and told me to take you to see your mom, who was sewn up, awake, and anxious to see you. For a few hours, all we really did was stare at you, amazed that you were actually there. We rocked you and fed you and I sung you songs by Belle and Sebastian when I thought nobody was watching.
The next few month were spent watching you sleep, and trying to keep you happy and healthy, and little bits of your personality started to creep out as you sopped up the world with those big blue eyes of yours. We started to find out things like how you love it when mommy dances her bad '80s dances and how you hate peas and how my glasses are still a mystery. You have become a very independent, happy, curious, bright-eyed little boy, and if you would only sleep through the night, so mommy and I could get some rest, you would be perfect + 1.
I used to not fear death. Not in a try anything, Xtreme sports kind of way, but in a way that if it happened, it happened. I wasn't scared to pass from one world to another. I was secure that the world would continue, and that things would eventually even out. I've never really told anybody that. But I'm telling you because now I am. You and your mother have put the fear of death in me in the best possible way. Now I think that if I went, I would truly be missing out on something.
We have changed jobs, moved to a new city, settled into a decidedly more small-town lifestyle, and I am loving every minute of it. My toy buying habit is a little more justified, and I have realized the usefulness of things like the internet, digital cable, drive-through coffee bars and chairs with straps. I live vicariously through you, remembering things that had been pushed aside by life, seeing them anew through your eyes. I am back to college levels of sleep without the drug habit to support it, and I don't care. Anything to keep you happy and healthy.

I love you, little man. Happy Birthday!

-Dad.

"I love you, I've a drowning grip on your adoring face
I love you, my responsibility has found a place..."


Pears