How to Make a Baby - 3

By Robert Levin

Score one for Connie's acumen and her resourcefulness in an emergency. "Harder," she was instructing me after no more than a minute had elapsed. "Go deeper. Yeah! Oh! Splash."

Cody was born nine months later, almost to the day. Nature being oblivious to human expectations of justice and symmetry, he had, contrary to the circumstances of his conception, both a proper allotment of toes and fingers and a countenance that was amazingly genuine in its sweetness and innocence. I mean there was nothing unhealthy or freakish about him, nothing that was even remotely Damien-ish. By every measure he was a wonderful specimen.

And me? Well, I was worn by then to a physical as well as emotional nub - I lost fifteen pounds during Connie's pregnancy that I didn't need to lose. But not dropping dead with Cody's arrival had a salutary effect on my nerves that was almost immediate. I was still filled with trepidation, of course, but - my panic significantly less clamorous and debilitating, my not so quiet desperation much quieter - it was, relatively speaking, a manageable trepidation.

Just days after his birth I was, in fact, as close as I get to all right again.

How to Make a Baby appeared in Cellar Door Magazine, Summer 2005

© Robert Levin 2005

Cemetery photos by Jerry Craven   © Jerry Craven 2007

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