What Keeps Me Up at Night by Luke

Late February 2010

It's 1:30am and it's been exactly 5 months of so since writing...Tonight I sit up thinking about the baby and I've convinced myself it's a boy. It don't know why - we've asked the doctor not to know - it's just a hunch. So, the thinking began...

Thoughts wandering around my restless mind and body are about the question of circumcision. I´ve convinced myself that this is the entire process: pain, screaming, passing out, crying, plop right into the arms of the midwife. Then labor starts! Andrea pushes and sweats a lot. Then the much anticipated words, "It's a boy!" Anyone and everyone in the room is astounded at the miracle of life (or simply too exhausted to really give a damn), and then...then...circumcision?

I think to myself laying in bed the phrase that breaks the silence of the awstruck people looking at the most beautiful baby in the world, "Welcome to the world big boy! Time to get circumcised!" Certainly there's some break for the boy, no? Or does it get done right then and there? That's not a decsion to give a 12 or 13 year old is it? My thinking is if you're going to do it, do it when he won't remember!

Now I'm sleepless just wondering how the whole thing goes down.

My mind wanders skipping from topic to topic as fast and steady as we breathe.

Andrea breathes in...What color eyes?

I breathe out...What color hair?

Breathe in...Dear God, please 10 fingers and 10 toes, you know, the ones we've been feeling kick now for a few weeks.

Breathe in...I imagine changing diapers one day and the circumcised boy pisses all over me.

Breathe out...I get mad, but then see his face and my anger melts away leaving a smile.

Breathe in...One small clean-up along the way.

Then I think about earthquakes - Haiti and Chili. For goodness sake, what the heck happens if right before, or in the middle, of the circumcision?! The birth?!

My mind imagines Andrea being in labor, covered in the richest sweat of her life as she´s about to give birth and then POW! The Big One hits Mexico, leaving us outside when the boy plops out. Jesus!

Bricks are falling, flash lights in hand, buckets of water, stacks of towels, in-laws, a midwife, all chaos surrounds us and Lord willing a little baby joins us for the craziness. S¿$%!

It's cold outside here in Tucson. My handwriting sucks today. So really, besides the earthquake and 20 beautiful digits, what do we do about circumcision? What if there's a slip of the knife? How do you explain that one? With, "Sorry son, there was an earthquake." That will be of little comfort to one in junior high gym class...but really, what a story!

What a story indeed - even if there's not earthquake and all goes fine in record time (four hours). A beautiful baby. Crazy.

I imagine the love that I know will surround that little boy in the first few moments of life will be pure and rich. My hope is that that love can be spread out just a bit through the world which is clearly so thirsty for love.

It will be a good day, 20 digits or none. Grey hair or blue. Crying or quiet. Both sets of parents or none. Boy or Girl. A day much anticipated since the first positive prego test and the first desernable kick.

Oh man, what if Andrea went into labor on the plane a day from now!? Well, enough questions for now. I'll have to save that one for another one of these nights. The End.


FYI: Andrea and I still do not know if it´s a boy or a girl. We´ve talked since about circumcision...something neither of us really considered until this sleepless night.