Closing time

Open all the doors and 

let you out into the world

[semisonic]

It's two in the morning. You're one week old today. 

I'm getting to know you, bit by bit. You have a fierceness that surprises me, an intensity to your dreams, your brow slightly furrowed. Then you smile in your sleep so sweetly that it breaks me. What does a seven-day-old dream of? 

I remember the brightness of the lights as they hung the drape for my c-section. Thirteen hours of mind-bending, bellowing labor and I could not dislodge you. Your father started weeping when they wheeled me away but I was beyond caring, outside myself from the pain. It was time for you to be out, one way or another, and as I roared through another contraction I knew that I had matched my will against yours and you had somehow prevailed. A knife would have to separate us.

I felt them tug you one way, then the other, my body heaving like the broken-backed deer I once saw on the highway. She's stuck, said the surgeon. God, she's really wedged in there, said another voice. 

Then a third voice, a beat or two later. We need to get her out now.

I tried to picture you brain-damaged. I tried to picture you dead. But despite the months we'd shared my body I'd never seen you and even now, I just couldn't begin to imagine what you looked like. All I knew was the first quicksilver flicker of you in my belly, the tiny shudder of your hiccups, the squirming of your feet when Ivan sang You must be daddy's little pumpkin, I can tell by the way you roll. 

I haven't prayed in years but I started to whisper Please keep her safe. Please keep her safe. Let her come into this world whole.

Is she okay? I asked the hand of the anesthesiologist. His fingers tightened slightly around the edge of the gurney. Almost there, I think.

And then, my body stilled. I heard nothing. Moments passed, and still nothing. After months and months of you, all at once I was alone inside myself again.

Miriam. We always knew what your name would be. Drop of the sea, bitter, beloved, longed-for. I smelled blood, sharp and hot, the interior of my own body. I sensed you were near. I thought of animals that eat their young and suddenly I understood. I would rather have you inside me again than blue and cold on a table in this bright room, where everyone can see you but me. 

Then. A noise. A barely perceptible intake, the very shadow of a gasp. The air shifted.

Suddenly a cry rings out. Unreal, unreal. You sound almost like you're asking a question. Then another. Another. They built in intensity as I tracked them across the room, blind behind my curtain. Go to her, I told your father, and he did. 

A few weeks ago Ivan came home and mentioned a random fact he'd learned about the song Closing Time by Semisonic. It was from some podcast about songs from the nineties. It's about his child's birth, he said while we loaded the dishwasher. No way, I replied, but all the sudden the lyrics finally made sense. Every new beginning comes from some other beginning's end.

I added it to our birth playlist, which was on my phone tucked into a bag in a room a million miles away from here, along with my birth plan and my sanity and all the other things I no longer cared about. But that was okay. The lyrics have seeped into me from hearing it a thousand times over the years. It's one of those songs everyone can recite from memory whether they want to or not. I let my eyes slide shut.

Closing time, one last call for alcohol so finish your whiskey or beer

Closing time, you don't have to go home but you can't stay here

A noise. I can see Ivan out of the corner of my eye. He's bent over, lifting something up against his chest.

Closing time, time for you to go out to the places you will be from

Closing time, this room won't be open til your brothers or your sisters come

He turns and begins to walk towards me. Tears are running backwards, up my forehead and trickling into my hair. A year ago we lit a candle for our first small one, who never made it here. How miraculous that you did. 

I know who I want to take me home

And then, all the sudden, here you are. 

I know who I want to take me home

Whoever you are, we will love you. Whoever you are, you are ours.

I know who I want to take me home

In this moment, it becomes clear- it was all worth it. It all brought us to you, specifically you, inevitably you. It was always meant to be you.

Take me home

And then, finally, we do.