The Idea of You, Part 3
Part Three of a (traditionally) three-part series. Read Part One here and Part Two here.
Month 7
Your name will be Cormac Joseph Hannan. A name can be a dangerous thing. Hopefully yours doesn’t overburden, overpower, or underwhelm.
Your first name comes from the writer Cormac McCarthy. There’s an elegance in his prose that’s obscured by its gruff subject matter. McCarthy’s writing proves that a person can be bookish and dangerous. I was thinking about what to name you, considering Cormac, when a strange thing happened.
I heard a raven call. I dismissed it, chalking it up to a lack of sleep. Ravens are rare here. Then I heard it again and went outside. Sure enough, a raven had perched on our house.
I watched it fly off, then returned to my computer and did some research about the name Cormac. Among the many fascinating meanings of your name is: raven. And so, you were as much named by a raven as you were by your parents. In the ensuing months, two ravens have become regular visitors to our oaks.
Your middle name is your great-grandfather’s name. It’s also mine, but truthfully, it’s his. I’ve just borrowed it for thirty-four years. You need a simple middle name to balance your first name. When I think of your great-grandfather, I remember the way strangers praised him. At his funeral, some guy who carried mail with him after the war--and hadn’t seen him since--turned up to tell me what a great guy he was. What made grandpa Joe memorable wasn’t his name, but the things he did and the relationships he built. I hope you will do the same.
Month 8
High summer. Torrential rains. Tornadoes. What kind of world are your mother and I bringing you into?
A violent storm hit while I was training jiu jitsu, bringing several tornadoes with it. Your mother told me to stay at the gym, but I drove through the flood to get home to her and you. We huddled in the basement and waited for the end amid high stakes and high water. The same thing would happen again during your first week at home.
Earlier in the summer, before the immediate cost of climate change became so hard to ignore, you went to LBI. You went to Cape May. You got a taste of the fish Gene and I pulled from the waves each morning and brought back for breakfast. The keeper weakfish were gone. So were the keeper summer flounder. In the quiet dawn and lapping surf, I wondered when you and I would fish together for the first time.
Then a sandbar shark’s fin severed the shallow water. I took a few steps back to dry sand in disbelief.
Gene and I fished again the next morning, and so did the shark.
Month 9
You wouldn’t turn. Your mother tried everything: from laying upside down on an ironing board that leaned precariously against the couch, to having two doctors manhandle her belly in an attempt to push you into place. You weren’t having it. A massive kick and you went right back to where you were, your head close to your mother’s heart.
I tried to warn you. Flip, or they’re going to cut you out. I was driving somewhere when it became clear that you had your reasons and I had to accept them. I had to surrender. Another lesson from our unborn son.
A few weeks later, I was sitting in a cold pre-op suite wearing scrubs, waiting to be called into the OR. A nurse came. She ushered me to stand beside your mother’s head while the surgical team worked furtively behind a lifted sheet. With every sudden jolt of pressure, your mother opened and closed her eyes in a slow, pained blink. I counted the seconds, listened for hints amid the surgical jargon to determine how things were going, but heard only murmurs drowned under the din of monitors and equipment.
Here’s the bambino, the surgeon said.
And there you were. Lifted above the blue sheet like a slime-coated offering to the gods of vitality. Your squalling cry was a rapture.
You, an idea made real. You were here. All of us--you, your mother, me--we were all here, together.
They cleaned you up and called me over to a small table where you lay ruddy under a heating lamp. As I counted your fingers and toes, studied your face, smoothed your hair, I realized that all that had transpired in the previous thirty-four years was prologue. The story had just begun.
To write it with you, that will be my life’s work.