My Very First Best Gift Ever

The little Texas tree house apartment, nestled high into a night sky thicket of bamboo, was aflitter with three or four hippie midwives and one young, sweet husband–perhaps the only person present who fully understood the terror, gravity and wonder of what was way too late to turn back.

Relentless pain roiled through my consciousness in a forever mode of no return. Delirious from the hallucinatory waves of misery, I thought it made perfect sense that the most beautiful baby boy I had ever seen was suddenly just there in the candlelight, glowing through the darkest part of the night. My very own “Petit Prince,” half moonbeam, half sunbeam.

The joy of seeing you for the first time was made even more wondrous by the realization that you had always been a part of my soul and my destiny all along.

With very little fanfare, the midwives quietly dressed us in soft, white hippie pajamas, blew out the candle, then tiptoed out and closed the door, leaving Daddy, you and me sleeping peacefully between dreamy sherbet sheets in a happy little knot that the dawn couldn’t pry loose even if it had wanted to.

My Very First Best Gift Ever.

Happy Birthday, Christopher.

Illustration Credit: Le Petit Prince, written and illustrated by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Gallimard (France), 1943.