Hope, Blinking

For Cameron

It is a small thing, really,
this small speck of
life, like a mustard
seed, like a faith
beginning; like a hope,
this small thing.

This small thing grows.
It develops, it
moves, it hears, it
shapes and it is shaped;
it takes form, it
gains strength.

Then, it is. This hope, this
desire, this promise, this
possibility become
possible, this theoretical
become real. And it
lies in my arms, blinking.

I Fell in Love at First Sight

Cameron Andrew Young, born 2:15 am, March 11, 2010. 22 inches long, 10 lbs, 3 oz.

A Wild 24 Hours

Tuesday night, we had a nice dinner with our son and daughter-in-law and her mother, prior to going to the hospital to begin her induction for childbirth. They got settled in by 9:30, we took her mother to their apartment, and then we went home.

I was in bed reading when our daughter-in-law called at 11:40 to say that our son had passed out in the birthing room, hit his head on the floor and was in the emergency room. Thirty minutes later, I was sitting in a cold room in ER, listening to my 30-year-old son not make any sense at all. The CT scan showed a small hematoma/clot on the back side of his head. They decided to watch it for the night, and admitted him to a room in ICU. I was back home about 3:30 a.m. and in bed at 4.

At 8:30 Wednesday morning, I was back at the hospital, shuttling between my son on the 4th floor and my daughter-in-law on the 2nd. My wife arrived at 11:30. My son had a CT scan at 1, and then an hour later the doctor was in the room with him and us, telling us the hematoma was getting bigger. Less than an hour later, he was prepared for surgery.

My son will eventually blog this from his perspective, but it's amazing how many wonderful and providential things happened: a long-time neighbor and friend turned out to be the 4th floor concierge at the hospital; a pastor showed up in the middle of the discussion with the doctor, and he stayed until everyone except me and my son had left and then, with my son in his bed, we were on our knees praying; when they wheeled my son in his bed downstairs to the operating rooms, the nurses took a detour -- through the childbirth wing on the second floor so he and my daughter-in-law could have a few moments together; a pastor from our church spent an hour and a half with us during my son's surgery, talking and praying and reading from Psalms.

And people all over been praying for my son and daughter-in-law. And I mean all over. I've received more direct messages on Twitter, more emails, more phone calls than I ever could have imagined -- I was overwhelmed with God's love, and so was my family. I can't ever express the depth of my thanks.

Here at the hospital (it's 9:10 p.m. as I write this), my son and daughter-in-law are celebrities. As the night nurse just told my son, "You guys make a great story." And they do.

But I'd prefer a little less drama the next time.

Update: And checking my RSS feed tonight, I find this by my friend Maureen Doallas: Love Builds Up: Poem for Glynn.

Please Pray - Update

Thank you so much for the prayers. And one answer to prayer was to be able to finally connect to the internet.

My son just had a CT scan, and we're waiting on the results. He is vastly more coherent than he was last night -- exhausted, felling like he has a hangover, with nausea and an ongoing headache -- but much more coherent. If the CT scan comes back OK, they will let him go to his wife's room two floors below.

They started to induce labor at 9 a.m. this morning; she seems to be moving fairly quickly, with labor pains now four miunutes apart. The doctor is estimating arrival time late this afternoon or the early evening. She's doing fine (but she is hungry -- she had a Popsicle for lunch).

People are praying all over -- I can't even begin to explain what that means. Thank you all for your prayers.

Please Pray

Last night, my daughter-in-law went into the hospital to start the induction process for childbirth. We had been out to dinner with her, her mother and my son, and then had gone to the hospital to check things out. About 11:40, my daughter-in-law called and said that my son had passed out, hit the back of his head and was in the hospital's emergency room.

Back to the hospital. He was disoriented but could talk. He was taken for a CT scan, and it was determined he had a subdural hematoma on the back of his head -- a hemorrhage. Fortunately, it was small. We waited for what seemed an eternity for the decision of whether to proceed with surgery or not. The neurosurgeon finally decided it was small enough to watch and do another CT scan today. My son is much more lucid this morning, according to my daughter-in-law.

She's waiting for her doctor, to determine whether to proceed with the induction. At 3 a.m., when she, her mother and I were in the intensive care unit room with my son, the maternity nurse arrived to say my daughter-in-law was being discharged at 6 a.m. because "that's what the doctor said." Which doctor actually said that is unknown, however.

I'm off to the hospital. I'll try to provide updates via Twitter.

Please pray.

What Was, What Is and What Will Be

I grew up in the South, in the waning days of segregation. I can remember separate water fountains and public bathrooms; separate seating at the movie theater and on the bus. And separate schools.

I knew these things as a child; they were part of what was.

To read the rest of this post about what happened when I found myself a minority in the work place, please visit The High Calling Blogs.

A Bird in the Hand: the Goodness of a Father

My father and I were never very close. He was one of those classic World War II veterans who didn’t say much about his war experiences. What I knew about them I learned from a carved wooden box that he bought in the Philippines when his ship stopped there. The box contained photos from Hawaii, the Philippines and Shanghai; a Chinese wedding cup; a piece of white coral; and a few other mementos. The box now sits on my bookshelf.

When I was not quite four, he started his own business, and it would become his life for the next 32 years. From the time I was 4 until I was about 12, I could go days, sometimes weeks, and not see him. He was up and gone to the office before I was awake, and he’d arrive home hours after I’d gone to bed. When I was 8, he was supposed to take me to the French Quarter for a Saturday outing. When he said he had to work, my mother did something rare for her: she rebelled. I could hear the argument from my room. She prevailed; we went to the French Quarter. I still have the pastel drawing an artist did of me next to Jackson Square (dated 1960 by artist Lee Stallings).

Even later, when he was home on weekends, he was usually planted in his recliner in front of the television set, alternately sleeping and dozing, with an ear plug for the police radio. But you didn’t think about being deprived of something; it’s what the situation was and you lived with it. Yes, I noticed other fathers coming home at 5 from work, but other fathers didn’t have their own business.

Sometime that spring of the French Quarter argument/outing, I was playing outside in the front yard, next to this huge tree (an old swamp tree, which tells you where our suburb came from). And I found a nest of three baby birds that had fallen from a branch. I rushed inside to get help.

It was a Sunday, and one of the rare ones when my father was home and not at the office. I can still remember how he was dressed – white t-shirt, plaid Bermuda shorts, black ankle socks and white tennis shoes. I can even remember how he smelled – a combination of sweat, Old Spice aftershave and cigarettes. He followed me outside and I showed him the baby birds.

He dashed inside, and returned with a shoebox. He put the nest in it, and gently scooped up the baby birds (they were pink and feather-less, tiny little things). We took the box inside, and then he found an eyedropper. He made up some liquid concoction, and patiently fed the three babies. He fed them several times that night, and even through the night.

He left late for the office the next day and came home early. He nursed the little birds for several days, but eventually they all died. I think he was as disappointed as I was. I cried; he didn’t.

I thought for years afterward that he really cared for those little birds, even to the point of giving up his normal working hours. And he did. But it took me some years to realize that he did it more for me than for the birds; it was his way of showing me something he couldn’t say.


If you’d like to read related posts on goodness, check out the One Word Blog Carnival over at Bridget Chumbley’s place.

"Last Light," photograph by nAncy of Poems and Prayers. Used with permission.