I remember thinking that the good folks in Houston’s Medical Center had misfired their mental rockets when they handed my oldest daughter, Malia, to me and said, “Here you go, Dad.”
“What are you thinking?” I wondered. “I don’t know what to do with a baby.”
And I didn’t.
But it wasn’t all my fault.
I was the second son of two, the last child, the “baby” as my grandparents called me. I never had to care for a younger sibling and had only baby-sat once in my entire life.
It was during a church meeting for a group of ladies. Somehow my mother conned some unsuspecting young mother into letting me look after her two children.
Things were going well until I dropped a toddler on his head. I didn’t think the fall was that bad, but he wailed and cried as if…well, as if he had been dropped on his head.
In fact, his cry was so guttural and despondent that his mother heard him and raced into the nursery though she was in a completely different section of the church building and on another floor.
When she arrived I tried to act as if I had no clue as to why he was crying. I don’t think she bought it. She never said anything to me about it, but then again, she just never said anything to me again. Ever.
It was this memory that sprang to my dazed and confused mind as the nurse cleared Malia’s nose, checked her pulse, wrapped her wrist and ankle with an identification bracelet — that little baby low-jack — and offered her over to me -– the great dropper — as if that was in her best interest.
I felt that day, and every day since, as if I was unequal to the task; that there was no way that I possessed the love, care, attention, wisdom, patience, discipline, insight, and foresight to raise my daughter into a 21st Century, Proverbs 31 woman, whatever that was.
Three beautiful and short years later, Rochelle, gave birth to our second daughter, Katharine, and I was served a second helping of inadequacy. I love my girls, just like you love your children.
My daughters are delightful, challenging creatures that have upended and capsized my and Rochelle’s lives in unforeseen ways.
If you have children, you know the feeling. Your life has been shifted, changed, and wonderfully altered in ways you could have never imagined before you became a parent.
You’ve never felt so much joy, love, anxiety and fear in your life. It’s not simply that just your life has been changed, you’ve been changed.
A baby changes everything.
The Luck of Roaring Camp
Every Christmas, I re-read the same short story by Bret Harte, “The Luck of Roaring Camp.”
Roaring Camp is a rough and tumble California mining town during the heyday of the Gold Rush. It was triangularly positioned between two mountain ranges to the East and West with a river flowing beneath the valley.
It was the kind of town reserved for swindlers, roughnecks, and thieves.
Harte describes Roaring Camp as filed with “…about a hundred men. One or two of these were actual fugitives from justice, some were criminals, and all were reckless….
Perhaps in the minor details of fingers, toes, ears, etc., the camp may have been deficient, but these slight omissions did not detract from their aggregate force. The strongest man had but three fingers on his right hand; the best shot had but one eye.”
Roaring Camp’s entire population was male, except for Cherokee Sal.
You can use your imagination to discern her profession, but when we meet Cherokee Sal, she is writhing in the pangs of child birth while the men of Roaring Camp entertain bets regarding whether or not she will live or die and the gender of the baby.
There are no other women in Roaring Camp, so Stumpy, a man with two former wives, is dispatched to perform the tasks of delivery.
Like many women during that time, Cherokee Sal doesn’t survive the intensity of childbirth, but her newborn baby does. Ever curious, the men of Roaring Camp file through the newborn baby boy's makeshift bedroom to peer at the the town’s newest citizen sleeping quietly in a candle-box.
A few men drop coins in a hat in order to buy the boy a few items he’ll need. One man, named Kentuck, hovers over the newborn. He reaches in and finds his heart suddenly opened when the boy reaches up and grabs hold of Kentuck’s finger.
In that moment, Roaring Camp is transformed. Kentuck was the first, but not the only, miner to be captivated by the presence of the little boy.
It doesn’t take long for all the men to attach themselves to the baby, just like the baby had attached himself to Kentuck’s finger.
Almost immediately the men decide that nearby towns, though they had women who might be better prepared to care for an infant, were too untrustworthy to raise a child and the boy should remain in Roaring Camp.
They named him, Luck!
And, soon, their luck and lives begin to change.
First, the men decide that Luck’s cabin should be kept immaculately clean. Carpet and mirrors were soon brought in. The mirrors led to higher standards of personal hygiene and the men began to wear clean clothes.
The cleaning of faces and bodies led to cleaner living, “No more were moral and social sanitary laws neglected”.
Luck required quiet and the townsmen gave it to him. Along with the silence, profanity waned. And because Luck needed it, men began to sing.
Luck was carted to work with the men where they soon noticed that Luck’s presence, they thought, led them to discover more gold. In just about every way, the birth of Luck gave new birth to Roaring Camp.
It's quite amazing in something so small, but a baby changes everything!
As Advent approaches, perhaps a good question would be whether or not you’re ready for a baby to change everything.