A Second Birthday Post For Today

Fifty seven years ago my oldest child was born.  His mother went into labor in the late evening and we timed the contractions, following the advise of our obstetrician to hold off arriving at the hospital until twelve midnight and thus save on the cost of a day in the hospital midnight bed census being the basis for billing.  So we set off at eleven from our house outside of New Haven up in the hills of neighboring Woodbridge, and as we descended and the valley lay before us we noted the glorious display of fireworks signaling a long drawn out celebration by the local Italian-American Catholic population of the Feast of the Assumption which must have begun on August 15.  It was indeed a celebration for us two novice parents, since the little boy who came into the world was such a splendid physical specimen, although when we brought him home from the hospital and laid him on the counter in the bathroom we were both terrified.  Neither of us had ever baby sat, never seen a baby before.  My mother-in-law who was visiting, supposedly in the guise of the ever helpful grandmother, stared dubiously at the little tyke with his little cut off umbilical cord, and opined in the navy she had always had some native person in the nursery and really was not the help she had imagined she would be!  Well, we mastered cloth diapers, piling them up in a bucket outside the front door for the diaper service after performing the vomit-making maneuver of washing off the shit they contained in the toilet, provoking more often than not my wife's morning sickness, since despite the old wife's tale that you cannot conceive when you are nursing, she was soon pregnant again.  We learned all about safety pins, making sure not to stick the little tyke in the stomach with them.  We learned you had to be a bit careful where you were when removing the diaper since a penis when coming into contact with cold air more often than not will start pissing out its contents.  I will never forget the first giant arc made by this tiny little thing!  Well, the baby child became a gentle giant, a sweet playmate to his new baby brother, a kind of honorary golden retriever to our two loving affectionate dogs; true enough he snacked on kibbles from the fifty pound bag that stood in the kitchen, prompting applause from our pediatrician who opined that there was not a commercial baby food as good for one as dog kibbles.  The simple dog food could stand in for the fundamental no fuss life which this charming gentleman chose for himself through the years, always a source of torment for his over elaborated, artifice loving, culture vulture queeny old father.  Happy Birthday, Sweet Child