Double Wow

Just got back from the hospital. I'm dead tired, but I thought I'd preserve this moment. I'm truly nonplussed. My definition of nonplussed would be the condition of a person being fazed, when that person normally considered him or herself as unfazeable. I know I'm not unfazeable. But I try to act like it. And I was definitely fazed. Tonight, at 11:20pm my sister-in-law gave birth to my brand-spankin' new baby, Meyer Edward Power Jackson. The nonplussed component of the experience arrived the moment I saw my brother brushing his fingers lightly across the arm of his son; this moment I witnessed from behind glass, as he was in the nursery; the baby's eyes glistened and opened and father and son saw one another. Or at least, father saw son, and son saw something. I don't know what newborns can see, if anything at all. But, nonetheless, its first antediluvian impressions were being formed. Then the baby was carted to its mother. And after the grandmothers, a grandfather, the mother and the father, I, the uncle, was allowed to hold it. I looked at it, and I told it, "You and me, Meyer, are gonna cause a lot of trouble." And I swear that as I said his name--this lump of proto-human--he looked squarely right back into my eyes.

So, congratulations, Drew and Amelia. I am so very glad that I moved back to Colorado, just for these moments. To be an uncle. For family's sake.