Here you come!

Well, Zöe, my sweet one. You are almost here. Tomorrow I take your mother to GW hospital. I'm going to miss feeling you move and wiggle inside her body. I'll miss seeing her roundness, and how beautiful she looks with you. But she's ready, and you're ready, and it's time. And of course, I won't miss any of that, because I'll be busy being in love with you.There probably are very few times when we know beforehand that we are going to fall in love. While I'm very excited, looking forward to seeing you, and knowing who you are, in some ways you are still theoretical. That singing you hear now and then? That's me. A few times I felt you move when I sang to you. In a couple of days, I'll sing to you in person, without your mother's body between us, and you'll know me, I hope. Years from now, maybe, you'll read what I write here. Strange, isn't it, that at this moment, I have never seen your face. You are coming from I know not where, to live with us, and to share our love, and to challenge us, make us grow, and surprise, delight, and scare the hell out of us. We asked God to send you, and you came faster than we'd imagined was possible. The day after tomorrow, you are going to change my life forever. You have no idea what you're in for, baby. I'm sure it will be upsetting, but it will be OK. Soon you'll be in your mommy and daddy's arms.I want you to know how much your mother cares for you. She was diagnosed with gestational diabetes a couple of months ago. She's been sticking her finger and measuring glucose four times a day, and giving herself injections twice a day. She's been very strict about what she eats, and has avoided all sweet things entirely. The obstetrician told her a couple of days ago that she had done a great job, and that few mothers with gestational diabetes care for themselves so well that their babies have normal size. You're right on the money, honey. Thanks to your Mom. She did great, because she already loves you. She talks and sings to you--maybe I'm a little envious that she's been so close to you for eight and a half months already! But I'll be the one in the middle of the night, when you cry, coming to feed you, hold you, sing to you, and make you feel safe. Your Mom and I are on your side, always, always.I talked to my Mom last night. She asked how I was. I told her that I've been more excited about vacations, and more worried about tests, than I am about becoming a dad in a couple of days. I told her that my denial was still intact, and so I wasn't particularly worried. Today at work, the day started pretty normally--I drove to work, listened to the radio, drank my coffee, programmed a while. About midday, the butterflies started. By mid-afternoon I was having trouble thinking. Ready or not--here you come. All afternoon I was buzzing. Dinner calmed me down some--now I'm just tired.Baby--do us a favor. Be easy on your Mom and yourself when you come, OK?I can hardly wait to meet you.LoveDad

Up late again

All this week, I've been up late--really late--either working, or with insomnia, or both. I seem to be averaging about one entry per month on this online journal. I intended to journal to Zoe, but of course, I haven't. But here's a chance, tapping away in my living room at a quarter to three in the morning.We had a bit of a scare this past Monday. Your Mom said she couldn't feel you moving much, even after she ate, which is when you are most active. She has been on insulin for a couple of weeks now, and I've been reading about gestational diabetes and wondering what effects it might have on you. I keep seeing stillbirth mentioned, though apparently, it's rare. When Carolina called me in the office, I had just arrived. I woke up at 2AM and couldn't get back to sleep. I got up and worked most of the night, finally getting a couple of hours starting around 10:30. I got to work at 2, and at 2:30 your Mom called, concerned. I told her to call the doctor, and by 3 I was on the Metro.The doctor had said that if C had been younger and not diabetic, he'd have just told her to close her door, take the phone off the hook, and do a kick count for 15 minutes or so. But you don't screw around with diabetes. So he said to go to the hospital, NOW. C said she had a meeting, and he said, cancel it, and go to the hospital.We got to GW Med Center in DC around 4:30, I guess. A resident hooked C up to a fetal heart monitor. I grabbed a bite to eat in the cafeteria. (How the hell can they not notice that the food in their cafeteria is even more unhealthy than what most Americans eat?) When I arrived in the exam room, the resident asked me to leave for 10 minutes. I did so and came right back. Turns out those ten minutes were to ask C if I ever abused her. I guess it's part of the protocol now. Good thing, too--I hope there are successful interventions sometimes.The residents said your heartbeat was perfectly normal. Your Mom did say on the way to the hospital that the doctor predicted you'd start hopping around as soon as we got there. You did get more active, actually. So we went home, relieved. Now C says both the doctor and I overreact. She was embarrassed that we'd gone "for no reason". But as I still think we did the right thing. I think your Mom thinks so, too, but it's hard to tell with her, sometimes.Tuesday was much happier. We went for an ultrasound to see about your size. Babies often get too big when the mother has gd--sometimes 11-12 lbs. The sonographer, Slava (well, Borislava, but she goes by Slava), was Russian. When I commented on her excellent English, she told me that she had been an English professor in Russia. Now she's working on a PhD in public health or something. Anyway, she was a fascinating person. She showed us that you were a girl, which is now abundantly, anatomically clear. I joked that maybe we should get a print of *that* image to show to your boyfriends later on. She measured you all over. Your Mom has some extra amniotic fluid, and some fibriods, but your numbers, my dear, are right on the money! I'm very happy about that. While the doctor says they'll take you out two weeks early (Jul 25 or before), I want you to have as much time as possible. C says the two weeks early bit is based on statistics. I haven't read about that myself. I'm just trusting the doctor.My favorite thing about the ultrasound, other than that you are healthy, is that we can already tell that you have your mother's chin.In just over a month, you'll be here with us. It still doesn't seem real. While I was waiting for them on Monday to finish with your Mom, I wandered the hall a bit near the neonatal unit. There was a tiny baby on a table in there, with a heat lamp over her. It looked like she was on a heat table in a restaurant. (Now there's a gruesome image.) She was sleeping soundly. The umbilical stump was about 3" long, and looked like a piece of latex. (I even thought it was latex, at first.) Earlier, I'd seen a black family, probably new aunts and uncles, videoing and talking about the baby. She was born at 3:13PM, so I was seeing a little life that was less than three hours old. She'd been breathing for less than three hours, and yet was already doing it reliably. Amazing. Amazing. Later, I watched her for about 5 minutes. So peaceful, sleeping there all by herself. I have no idea why she wasn't with her parents. It made me so sad to see her there all alone. There was a nurse at a desk in the room, but still. Where were her parents? Later, when Carolina and I left the hospital, they'd closed the blinds, but you could still see through the cracks. That little baby was crying, and nobody was holding her. When your time comes, they're not keeping you away from me that long, unless there's a serious problem!Odd that I said that you'll be here with us. You're already here, of course. But I don't know your world right now, and you don't know mine. They say you already know our voices. I sing to you, and sometimes you move and kick. Soon, we'll try putting a flashlight on your Mom's belly to see if you respond. You won't remember any of it, of course. But I can tell you what you did, and maybe someday, you can read it for yourself. My dear little Zoe. I love you already. Who will you be? Where did you come from? It's a strange place to be in. I know that six weeks or so from now, I'm going to be totally exhausted, and totally, madly in love with you. But tonight, I'm sitting here in the dark, and you're floating in your darkness, and we're waiting to meet each other.

The Hypochondriac

The hypochondriac stands in the warm flow of the shower,guts grinding, frozen with fear.Shaking hands palpate the liver, slide around behind the neck,poke under the jaw, looking for evidenceOf hardened lumps, of swollen nodes, or unexplained pains,Looking for evidence that he is, as expected,Damned after all, and has just begun the tortuous descentFrom a living hell into a permanent one.The water runs down his body unnoticed, wasted, and swirls into the drain,Through the systems, into the pools, then down the streamsTo the rivers, where it glides past rolling hills,Circulates in muddy eddies, and arrives at last, to the sea.Little by little, the sun lifts it up into the heavens, andon some gray day, sooner or later, it falls back to earth.

The Hypochondriac

The hypochondriac stands in the warm flow of the shower,guts grinding, frozen with fear.Shaking hands palpate the liver, slide around behind the neck,poke under the jaw, looking for evidenceOf hardened lumps, of swollen nodes, or unexplained pains,Looking for evidence that he is, as expected,Damned after all, and has just begun the tortuous descentFrom a living hell into a permanent one.The water runs down his body unnoticed, wasted, and swirls into the drain,Through the systems, into the pools, then down the streamsTo the rivers, where it glides past rolling hills,Circulates in muddy eddies, and arrives at last, to the sea.Little by little, the sun lifts it up into the heavens, andon some gray day, sooner or later, it falls back to earth.

Feeling trapped, freedom, and letting go

I awoke almost in tears this morning from an upsetting dream. In the dream, I was driving to work with my wife. I got confused in the heavy traffic, and we were almost in an accident. My wife was so frightened and enraged that she turned into my ex.As I lay in bed, trying to process what that dream might have been about, my eyes fell on a mounted poster that I've had for fifteen years. It's a print from a painting society exhibition in a tiny town in France. "Société Artistique de BEAUGENCY - 1988 - 20e Anniversaire". The print is of the winning painting, which I've always loved. I bought three copies of the print, and mounted one of them. I have the other two rolled up somewhere, to replace this one when it wears out. Number one has lasted me sixteen years and probably a dozen moves, and is in pretty good shape.The painting is in oil, in dull, almost drab, unsaturated grays and browns.The scene is from about two inches above the dashed white line in the middle of an asphalt country road, looking up into a sky full of gray and white clouds. Looks like rain. On the left, in the middle of the empty road, is an abandonded suitcase, sitting upright. In the middle of the scene, one end of a knotted rope lies beside the suitcase, and the rest of the rope ascends into the sky and disappears into the clouds.So the story is, someone was trudging along an empty road, carrying this somewhat battered old suitcase, when without explanation, a rope fell from the sky at his feet. Without hesitation, he simply put down the suitcase and climbed.To me, this painting has always been about freedom; about what freedom is. For most of my life, I've considered freedom to be about not being tied down by commitments. At any point, if something better comes along, I can drop that suitcase, take that opportunity, and climb into heaven. Trouble is, at the other end of that rope, seems like there's always just another suitcase. The great new job, turns into just having to go to work today, even if it's still "great". The relationship, whether it's going well or poorly, fills me with anxiety--yes, this is love, but is it love enough? What if someone else comes along and I realize I made a mistake? What if, instead of being married to an angel, I'm married to a suitcase?I think I see the error I've had in my thinking all of these years. I thought that freedom was about having options, and commitment was a problem because it cut down on options--so freedom and commitment are in tension. I think there's some truth in that, but it's only part of the truth.What I realized as I was looking at the painting this morning, is that it's also about letting go. As resistant to commitment as I've been in my life--in my career, in relationships, in consistently working on a skill--I also cling to the past. I feel regret over opportunities I lost because I didn't take on leadership and responsiblity in previous jobs to the extent I could have. I mourn some of the loves I had that I decided to not make permanent. All the suitcases I've put down, I continue to carry around, stubbornly. Makes climbing hard.In the past year, I've gotten married, changed careers, bought a new house, and moved, and now Zoe's on the way. If a baby isn't commitment, nothing is. Yet my wife, my career, my child, the mortgage--these commitments don't seem burdensome to me. They're not suitcases. Why? Because I've actively chosen them. Because each one of these things, in greater or smaller ways, are ropes that have fallen at my feet, and that I've grabbed onto and begun to climb. There's two things I have to remember. First, to let go. I can't climb a rope if I'm carrying half a dozen suitcases. And second, and most importantly, my commitments won't be burdensome if I keep choosing to be committed to them, and joy will come from that. So I'll keep climbing that rope, or, God willing, walking along that road with my wife and child. And eventually, I'll come to realize that the rope and the suitcase are the same thing.

Living for stuff

Sometimes it feels like I'm just living for stuff. Filed taxes today--had to pay $8000 because I sold a house last year. I owe C the amount of her refund, too. Fortunately, I'm getting enough back from not having filed in 2001-2 to pay for it all. But this morning: an half-hour in traffic. An hour in the bank to cash one check and get two bloody cashier's checks. Half hour in the car. Another hour looking for the Post Office at the Naval Hospital in Bethesda. (Damn hard to find.) Half hour in the post office. Errands, errands, errands. Dealing with stuff. What happened to living?Work was good when I finally got there. The new technical lead position is invigorating. I haven't been this excited about work since I got my first co-op job. But I don't know how to lead yet, exactly. Well, maybe I know some things. Like be clear about when I do and don't know something. Listen to the client. Listen to the people in my group. Persuade with good humor. Requests, complaints, and obstructive behavior have underlying reasons (though not always the apparent ones). Most of those reasons are about things I don't understand yet, and so I need to learn to understand them. Other times, I think I do understand them. If my understanding doesn't help me deal more effectively with the situation, then probably I'm wrong about what I think I know.Found an interesting Web site today: http://www.smartmarriages.com. Has a creepy "registered" symbol after the "smart marriages" name. But sounds like it's based on good research, based on a spot on This American Life (http://www.thislife.org). Social scientists have been quantifying communication styles, and now some claim they can predict which marriages will and will not make it. And teach people, in fairly short order (~10 hours of classes), how to communicate to improve their marriages. They claim a 50% decrease in divorce for their training. Of course, there's a selection effect there. I'm not too sure what the statistics are or mean. But these people clearly get that relationship is about relating, and want to teach people to relate. Looks like good work to me.Tonight C and I watched a great NOVA show, Life's Greatest Miracle, which you can actually watch on line if you missed it. I couldn't help wondering what happened to the zygotes and fetuses we were seeing on the show--or were they computer graphics? Some were clearly electron photomicrographs. I'd be interested to know what properties they use to do the false color (or do they just color them "by hand"?) But the Web site says "extraordinary microimagery", so I think we were seeing the real think. I said C and I watched the show--actually, I watched it, and C talked to her nanny, who doesn't look like she's going to come to help with the baby. She was on the phone for over half an hour, and came back just in time to see the delivery. Ouch. She's already having little "oh, no" moments about that, I think. Now it looks like the UTI's back. Thank God for doctors and strong antibiotics. Where will we be if those become ineffective?Iraq is scarier than ever. Junior was on the tube tonight, his third-ever prime-time press conference, after lounging in Crawford while the war he started goes to shit. I deliberately watched something else--what's the point in watching him stand there and lie?Heard a great comment on Wait Wait Don't Tell Me last week. One of the panel said they wished they could hear the 9/11 chief executive closed testimony, just so he could see the part where Junior talks while Cheney drinks a glass of water.

First entry

At the moment, I have no friends here. Probably that will change. For the moment, I'll talk to myself.

The most important thing happening in my life at the moment is another
person. My wife's and my first child will be arriving the first week of
August, more or less, if all goes well. We plan to name her Zoe Mury
Johnson. Zoe is of Greek origin and means "Life". Mury is her mother's
grandfather's last name. He was Swiss, and I wish I had met him, but he
died years before Carolina and I met. He was one of those people who
takes the pain from previous generations and, instead of passing it
down, absorbs it and passes down love instead. I really wish I'd met
him. If anything of us survives death, maybe I will, some day, in a
way. Meanwhile I love the part of him that lives in your mom.

If I manage to journal regularly here, I'd like to write regularly to
Zoe to welcome her to the world. I'd like to start introducing her
daddy and her daddy's family to her. Maybe someday she'll be able
to read what I was thinking as she was forming.

So, Zoe, welcome to God Knows What. I can't say I understand where you
came from--I don't even understand where I came from. Oh, sure, I know
all of that biology stuff. I know the stories people tell about the
real question--where our consciousness comes from. But, my dear, I
simply have no answers for you about why you're here. Except that your
Mom and I love each other, and we want someone to share that with. At
least, that's my answer--you'd have to ask her what she thinks. I
imagine it's something similar.

Today your Mom and I went down to the Tidal Basin. You'll see it some
day soon. It's near the Jefferson Monument. It's surrounded with
hundreds of cherry trees that bloom every spring. Thousands of people
come from all over the world to see those trees. And we live just a few
miles from them! I'll show them to you some day. Not only are they
pretty, but they smell nice. We went with a couple of Mexican friends
of your Mom's, who are here for a few months--you Mom's friend Gloria,
and her student Gracia. In their lab, they have another person called
Alma--we think it must be a spiritual place to work!

Before we went to pick up our friends, we were wondering why you don't
cry while you're inside your Mom. Certainly you're going to cry a lot
after you come out. Until you learn to talk, it will be one of the few
ways you can communicate with us directly. But are things so good for
you in there that you never cry? Or are you crying sometimes and your
Mom just can't feel it? Do you just have nothing to cry about yet? Or
laugh? I really wonder what, if anything, your experience is like
tonight. The doctors told us last Monday you are 20 weeks and two days
old (your Mom's pregnancy was at 22 weeks 2 days). Soon we'll feel you
move. We're going to shine a flashlight on your Mom's belly after you
start moving. She says you'll react. What kind of music do you want to
hear? I don't suppose you know yet.

Tomorrow is Easter. We're having over a dozen people over. I'm making
curried eggplant (and chicken for meat eaters), pad thai with banana
flower, and sticky rice with mango. The other guests are bringing
things, too. We'll have a great party.

Your Mom's kind of freaked out about the belly thing. You're her first
and only pregnancy, and although she delivered dozens of babies when
she was a doctor in Guatemala, she's never been on this end of the
process. She's putting on crema de cocoa to try to prevent
stretch marks. I love feeling her belly and knowing you're in there. I
keep telling your Mom she's beautiful, and I think she believes me, but
she still complains. She says being pregnant sucks. She has to pee all
the time, she's getting cramps in her legs, and every time she eats
lately, her stomach is crammed up under her rib cage. We're both
looking forward to meeting you, but I think your mama will be happy to
get her body back.

Let me tell you a bit about your daddy right now. Right now, I don't
really understand what it is to be a dad. I know that I'm going to fall
completely, uncontrollably in love with you the instant I see you. I
already have moments like that sometimes. But for the most part, you're
simply floating off out there in the not-too-distant future. Your
grandma, my mom, has told me that she wants me to have children not for
her sake, but because until I do, I'll never understand how much she
loves me. I already understand quite a bit, I think, but also I think
she's probably right. I'm looking forward to loving someone that much.
You're a lucky one to have parents like us, too. We're a good balance,
your Mom and I.

Well, it's late, honey, and I have a lot of cooking to do in the morning. I'll write again soon.

Love

Dad