Mother's Day

I have been present at the grand total of two births: my own and my son's. Since the memories of my own birth are sketchy at best, I have to rely on the experience I had on the morning that my son entered the world. These are my qualifications for writing about the miracle of birth.
First let me say that I have already had this discussion with my wife some years ago - much to my embarrassment and her chagrin. I consider myself a fairly clever person who holds both a Bachelor's Degree in Creative Writing and a Teaching Credential from the State of California. I have, periodically, studied hard and learned much to become the person I am today both personally and professionally. Now here comes the embarrassing part: I attended somewhere between three and seventy pre-natal classes with my wife before the birth of our son and the practical knowledge I retain from all of that schooling is approximately nil.
Early in the morning on May fourteenth, 1997 I drove my wife to the delivery room at Alta Bates hospital in Berkeley, California. Let the record also show that after days of sleep deprivation, we had both managed to fall asleep for a few scant moments that night when the call to action finally came. It should also be noted that I had made this trip twice before for "false alarms" and was perhaps lulled into complacency. Then I did the stupid thing. I asked if I could please take a shower before we left so that I could be more awake for the drive. Hindsight is like x-ray vision on this one as I can examine every tiny detail of how wrong this idea was. Still, I took a fast shower and then drove us all up the hill to the hospital.
Here is where all that training and study would have paid off. I remembered where to park and what floor maternity was on, and then I start to lose track of the progression of events. I had spent days leading up to this moment preparing the soundtrack of the delivery, in careful consultation with the incipient mother. There were happy songs for this stage, then that stage would feature the droning sounds of didgeridoo, and would culminate in the joyous sounds of celebration, and maybe I'm forgetting one stage, oh yes that must have been transition.
Out here it all felt like a flurry and a blur and I want to believe that I was doing the right thing, especially when I was asked very clearly and directly by my wife to "please shut up." At that moment she had my trachea in her hand and I am sure that, had I not shut up, she would have crushed my windpipe.
Then it was over. My son came into the world and I lurched over to the tape player and changed to "Ode To Joy" followed immediately by "Born to Run." I changed my son's first diaper, kissed my wife - the mother of my son - and drove back down the hill through a very grey morning to make several thousand phone calls.
I think I did alright, given the relative health and happiness of both mother and child nine years down the road, but I that may be the reason it's called "the miracle of birth." It's a miracle that it all turns out so well when they let clowns like me in the delivery room.