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For Part 1 of this article, click here: 
And then it happened! I was sitting at
the head of the operating table, holding Kristi's hand, when the
doctor said, "We have a healthy baby boy." All throughout
surgery, I was afraid to stand up so that I could see what was going
on. I figured the doctors and nurses would yell at me and say,
"Boy, what do you think you are doing?! You sit back down
now!" But when I heard the doctor say that he could see the baby,
I didn't care if they threw a scalpel at me, I was going to look at my
child.
There he was! I could almost hear the angels singing as my precious
baby boy was brought into the world. He was perfect in every way, and
the tears began to fall from my eyes. "Oh Kristi! He's
beautiful!" was all I could stammer. I was in the "New
Father fog."
In reality, Caleb looked terrible. His skin color changed about four
times in the first five minutes, and I wouldn't have been surprised to
be on the cover of the National Enquirer: "Reptile Boy Born in
Wisconsin! Man father's chameleon in real life X-Files episode!"
His hands and feet were extremely wrinkled, like he had been in the
pool too long, and all kinds of bodily secretions were oozing from his
pores.
Everything else seemed fine, though… Except for THE TWO HEADS!
Yes, my boy had two heads, and that was the first thing Kristi noticed
when the nurse handed Caleb to her for the first time. She told me
later that she was thoroughly convinced that she had married a
psycho. "My husband called this thing beautiful?"
Caleb went through twenty hours of pushing, but he was too big to fit
through the birth canal. Consequently, you could tell where his head
was stuck all that time. It had swollen up like a balloon in two
different places, and really did look like he had two heads. Being the
proud father, I figured that was God's way of storing all the brain
matter he inherited from me. The swelling did go down in a few days,
but Caleb wasn't looking his best for the first few weeks.
But it is amazing how being a new father can blind you to certain
realities. I kept telling everyone how beautiful he was. It wasn't
until a year or so later, after looking at photos, that I realized
Caleb looked like a swollen two-headed lizard that had been in the
water for too long. But to me, he was the most beautiful creation that
had ever appeared on the earth.
Fatherhood. You gotta love it!
Michael T. Powers
Thunder27@aol.com
Copyright © 2000 by Michael T. Powers, All rights reserved
Back to Part 1 of this article, click
here:
| Michael is
happily married to his high school sweetheart Kristi, and has
two boys: Caleb (4 years old) and Connor (1 year old.) Several
of his stories have been published and he is working on
his first book. He owns a video production business,
coaches high school girls sports, and is the founder of
"Straight From the Heart," a free daily E-Zine that
features inspirational and uplifting stories, often by
published writers. To subscribe send an email to: Thunder27@aol.com |
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