April 4th, 2014: The Birth of My Son

      I may do something as great but I will never achieve anything greater than my first born, my son, Nathaniel Jacob Sheppard.

      I am still in awe of him. I cannot fathom that I helped to create a life. "No this morbid being deteriorating, this 'foul model of existence,' this interminably insecure and corrupt individual didn't have the balls (obviously he did) to breathe life into the universe (with the help of a beautiful love of course), how distasteful and selfish and dreadful." Well, I'm fucking sorry.

                                  

      The  day before Lizette, my love, began to feel her first contractions. Like my love is so apt to do, she was helping me film my next interpretation of a poem I wrote about my son who was due any day. In the middle of filming she would gasp and sigh and writhe in pain and then ask me "Did you get what you want? Do you wanna shoot it again?" with one understandable caveat "Hurry the fuck up please! I am hurting! It hurts!" Once I got the shots I needed, Liz called her mother and they went to White Memorial Hospital (the Los Angeles hospital where my first born was born) as a precaution.

      Nathaniel Jacob Sheppard is the first child for both, Lizette and I so we couldn't attribute the pain she was feeling in her lower abdomen to anything. When I asked her to describe what was going on with her body her response was essentially "you have never felt a fucking pain this horrible and I haven't either." She was having contractions. She had deduced that nearly falling to her knees standing in a "Devil's" mask in our bathtub but she wasn't too sure (in retrospect that pain was being stabbed by a feather). And of course, neither was I. Nathaniel being real was me kissing her belly every morning before work and feeling him kick and maneuver inside of her for comfortability. He was inside of my partner's body. That was the crux of my perception of his life, my body wasn't going through the beautiful mutations of motherhood, I could only observe. I know this is purely machismo conjecture but I told Liz the morning after Nate was born that I could handle a mysterious hormone's dismantling of my sexual organs so a nine pound being can pass through them. She ignored what I said.

      Liz was admitted to White Memorial around 9:30 in the evening on April 2nd. Where was I? I was at home asleep! Knocked out! But that's because my amazingly prodigious and considerate and beautiful woman told me to stay home. She knew that I had to be to work early the next morning and she didn't want me to miss out on money because of a scare. She left the apartment around 9:15 that night and I went to sleep shortly after she left. Without provocation I awoke around 11:00 and immediately called her cellphone to inquire why she wasn't next to me in bed, or in the bathroom or kitchen. Liz answered,

"Babe, guess what?" My response "I'm heading to the hospital what do you need?" We didn't have an overnight bag prepared so I gathered everything she told me to grab placed them into a Nike duffle and at midnight I walked to the hospital (which is a mile or so away from our home).

      Nathaniel wasn't even close to being born that night. I arrived at White Memorial at around 12:15 on April 3rd. Lizette was only three centimeters dilated out of the ten necessary to pass Nathaniel's big ass head through her birth canal.

      I won't breakdown every centimeter because there is no way that I can describe the pain that my love was going through. Still, I felt when she hurt. Ignorantly, I wanted to understand how so much pain and anguish can be endured and rightfully celebrated and enjoyed.

      Brizette, Liz's younger sister, and I tried to coach her through her last three centimeters, Liz did not want to come under the numbing spells of any painkillers, so she endured. Unbeknownst to Liz, Brizette and myself was that contractions don't equate to dilation. For three hours Liz was seven centimeters dilated. Pain piercing her lower abdomen like the "Saw the Woman in Half" magic trick gone awry. Her hands and legs became numb, paralysis cutting right through her. The torment of pregnancy's last dolor, "I can't feel my legs, my hands can you feel my hands? I can't feel my hands."

      It was inspiring watching her determination, sparring with unimaginable (for me, not for her) agony. For three hours of oxygen mask muffled breaths Brizette and I watched Lizette fight to give birth like women did before the advent of advanced pain relief agents. Agents that were fabricated specifically to deal with the tremendous but amazingly beautiful misery and suffering in the cause for life. I will never forget the longest sentence she was able to muster from her tormenting discomfort, her eyes peering at her young sister through the bars on the gurney, "Don't ever have a child unless you're sure you love that person. I'm serious. This fucking hurts."

      Despite Lizette's agony, Brizette and I laughed. Her pain consumed body shook and quivered but maintained. In my head I thought "That's right, baby. Nate wouldn't be here without our love." It was hard to process how her body could remain so still, the sheets and blankets ironed but her head swayed like a Charmer's serpent in except she didn't want to hear the flute, she would cover her ears with her hands if she could.

      Nathan came eight hours later, passed 11:59 on April 3rd into the early hours of April 4th, 2014... That first cry when your baby is born is the most amazing and reassuring sound.  I know he's only three days old but even when he cries now I cherish it, crying is the greatest sign of life, of humanity and feeling. That's what he did in my arms. He cried and cried and cried and then I smiled and kept smiling. I walked all over the delivery room with him, relieved that he was healthy and overwhelmed by his aura and how he immediately meant much more than I could have ever conceived.

      For a split second, one rogue synapse allowed me to honor those men who run away from their children. I felt a fear that told me to run but I was paralyzed like Lizette's hands and legs by responsibilities' pang, protection's necessity. That synapse died as my son, swaddled by blankets and my arms, cried into calm. My mind is whole heartedly invested in my son. There was no way that I could ever succumb to the gutlessness that would allow for a life I created to be unrecognized by his father in a paternal society. Nathaniel stared me straight in my eyes as if he read that brief thought of cowardice and warned me against that horrific thought, a thought with the credence of a captured spy bound by her commitment to conceal secrets paramount to the preservation of others but has become an ashtray. I never took them seriously. I understood why a man would leave his child, it's a coward's fear. The type of fear and agitation that creates traitors, that forces a captain to jump overboard before the first mate realizes the ship is sinking.

      It is going to be difficult making sure he is taken care of. Even more difficult than that is to perceive that I can no longer be selfish, I can no longer be reckless and uncaring about what happens in and to my life and body. My time is important but now must form around his. I must simply understand that his life takes priority over mine; his wants, his needs, his desires and all that is necessary in insuring that he cries less and less, he must feel secure and safe, and not stew in loathing like his father does, is increasingly tantamount.

      Another rogue synapse, a corrupted connection, understood why some people never wanted to have kids. It doesn't matter your sexual orientation, it doesn't fucking matter. I understood why people would not want to tie up finances and time and share their resources and food and shelter with another life that was completely dependent upon them and only paid in piece of mind or they helped to feed a god complex or were a mistake ("blessing") that was forced to be lived through religious necessity, a benevolent offering, but you truly resent because that mistake destroyed you. You only want to live your life and worry about things fleeting. You don't want to lose your aspirations or watch your dreams die, you hate that you would have to wake up for a feeding, or take that overtime because your son needs school clothes, or play that video game or read that book for your son's enjoyment, your time unowned. No more steaks for dinner. In between every line you write you have to check on your son's wellbeing. You have to drink less and smoke less too. You don't want that permanent obligation that is your son's credence. Your life is not a model to be followed and you have no wisdom to pass. You have the life you live and you live it happily, not caring that someone decided that you should live it. I felt that. In every tear he shed I saw me looking at him, unsure if I could dedicate the rest of the short life I have lived to another being so vehemently, with an indelible favor to again, need him to only know his pleasures.  Similarly, to the last crazy synapse, connectivity was lost never to be regained.

      Our collective breaths, our individual beliefs, our separate actions which all debate how to enjoy existence, constitutes the necessity to perpetuate life. If (a big "IF." some people don't want to see anything but the end of all things or the self-sustaining advantages in all things; the problems of a chaotic universe) you love your life and enjoy all of the things that have fallen upon you then why wouldn't you want another life to experience the feelings, awful or gleeful, that you experience every second of your reality (even those who only want complete universe destruction needs people to follow in their path once life flees them). You don't want someone to learn what you have learned? I'm not saying you can't do that without having a child because I believe that you can and know that a lot of people do but lives are not forever, we can only hope that life is. And someone has to create it and nurture it. Minds that will decide (although we haven't seen equality or the end of injustice or abuse in recorded history and likely won't, because we DIE!) we have to keep trying and you need people to try. Even if some of us have stopped.

      Selfishness is innate in all of existence and on April 4th, 2014 I knew that I was going to always help someone, my son, be selfish too. I couldn't help but think (know!) that I helped do something incredible. Where did all the rogue synapses go?