This is the beginning. The beginning of something new that I shall embark on, but first a prelude to the saga. You like that? You like how I added the title of my post to this? Yep, that’s just a taste of the kind of dork I am. So before I get into my upcoming adventure, I’d like to tell you a story. It involves my wife, myself, and the birth our son Logan. The date was March 17, 2004 and we had just left the doctor’s office. Our midwife had told us that she would not see us until the following weekend and she was pretty sure of herself so we went about our day. We made our phone calls to family and told them that although Rebecca was dilated at a two that the big show would not occur for another week.  The process was rather slow and we would just have to wait. So just before we got home I decided that since it was St. Patrick’s day, I would stop and pick up one beer to celebrate. The party store I stopped at was a hole in the wall on Holland’s south side and it had no good Irish beers. So I decided to buy a can of Labatt’s Blue. We went home, ate dinner and I had my one beer to celebrate the holiday. When we decided to crash out I felt that I would have an excellent rest. What I didn’t know was that someone else had a different plan for his mother and father.

I was awaken from a dead sleep by my wife and she told me that it was time. I was not awake and completely out of it. Her contractions were close and I went into father panic mode. I jumped out of bed and I was moving at warp speed. Everything was a blur and I heard a faint voice calling me but I kept moving. The bags were packed and I was scrambling to get things ready and lead my wife to the car. I kept hearing the voice and finally I snapped to reality and the voice had been my wife trying to calm my dumb ass down. My wife had been watching me run around like a crack head with his eyebrows on fire from too many pipe hits. When she finally got my attention I noticed she wasn’t even ready. She was going to shower before leaving and she was calm while I was going nuts. When I think about it now I can see myself as a Jack Russell Terrier jumping around and asking its owner to throw the ball so that it can run after it like a fool. After her shower we were off and we had to drive from Holland to South Haven in the middle of the night and the fog was thick. It was now March the 18th and I was hoping for an act of god to part the fog in front of us but nothing happened.

When we got there the pain was getting worse for my wife. We sat and tried to answer questions at registration the best we could. Rebecca’s contractions were hitting hard and the lady registering us was training someone. It took forever and you would think she would push her aside so that we could get up to a room but we had to wait. I remember all the questions and how annoyed I was. I stood up and yelled at them, took off my shoe and thew it at the trainer. Her nose was broken and blood was everywhere. Can you see it? Can you see the lady tripping out after getting hit with my shoe? Yeah well it didn’t happen and once I snapped out of my imagination and back to reality I noticed that a nurse was coming with a wheelchair. They decided to skip the paperwork and get us up to the room to get things going. By then I was already dilated at an 8 and my heart was pumping. I was freaking out and still, my wife was the one who was calm.

The rest of the experience was a blur. Out of all the pain that my wife went through it made sense that I felt some pain as well. The midwife had told my wife to hold me as if we were slow dancing in order to somehow ease the pain but during a major contraction my shoulders were pinched to the point that I about peed myself. My thigh was grabbed so hard that it took a few washes for the hand print to come out of my pants, and every time my wife yelled at me to get the nurse, my dumb ass attempted to run to the nurses station but was thwarted when hearing,

“Rich! What are you doing?”

“I’m getting the nurse like you said!”

“What? Just pull the cord!”

What a fool I was during that time but I would not change it for anything. Being a parent is one of the best parts of life and when Logan was born I cried. Now Logan is seven years old and Rebecca is expecting again. I’m sure I am going to pull another episode of the fool, panicked father but it’s going to be an excellent adventure. With that said, I must remind you that this post is simply a prelude to something more. A new adventure begins and it will be detailed in my next post.