Atomictumor

I look at Pigpen, and he doesn’t seem the same kid he was back on Halloween. Theres nothing really different about him that I can put my finger on, he still looks the same, talks the same, plays the same, but theres something there, and he doesn’t seem like our baby boy anymore, or rather, he doesn’t seem like Mommy’s little baby boy, like he used to be.

I’ve seen this before with MastaG, back when Pigpen was born, and he almost immediately ceased to be our baby boy.

—

BJ and I drove back from our ill-fated Radiohead show in Washington DC, chock full of blah. It totally sucked. We had a crappy nights sleep, crammed in the back of our Subaru. Mojofilter, incidentally, got some sort of evil form of pneumonia, and was dog sick for like 2 weeks or something. It sucked.

We were still trying to have the baby, and getting a little nervous, because the pregnancy tests kept coming up negative. BJ wasn’t due for a period for some time (yes, I have always known when her periods were due… I could tell before she could that they were coming up on account of her being evil and her boobs hurting. TMI, indeed, but I could have made it worse), so we didn’t have that big indication that theres a bun in the oven, but we were still a little nervous that we’d actually have to put some effort into it, and that we’d miss that nice April-May due date that BJ was wanting to hit, to avoid being big ol’ pregnant in the cold of winter or the hot of summer.

While we had the opposite of trouble getting knocked up with Gabe, we were concerned that our fertility then had been a fluke, as BJ’s sister and brother both appear to be infertile. She was kinda concerned that she wasn’t going to be able to have the kid, and that made her want him more.

For the record, I had NO PROBLEM with the extra work involved in having a baby. None at all.

—

I had been working at the same place in town, doing tech support, and was about as high up on the totem pole as I wanted to get (which wasn’t high, unfortunately, but to get higher requires that you sacrifice your home life to a certain extent, and as the home life is the whole point of trying to get a higher place at the office, I didn’t see the point… still don’t). What was more important to me was that I did my job well, and had a reputation for being that way. Theres nothing like being considered talented at what you have to do every day, its a damn good feeling. If you don’t have that feeling at your job, I suggest a different line of work.

Problem was, I hated the job. The hours were good, the co-workers were good, the boss was good, but the work was tedious and irritating. I dealt quite frequently with escalations, and theres something soul sucking about talking to people who are red in the face, blaming you for the inactions of a mega corporation. Thats something nobody should put up with, but I did every day for a while. It started getting to me.
We’ll get back to that, but lets get back to BJ’s uterus first.

At some point in late August, probably a week or so after the Radiohead trip, we discovered that she was pregnant! Yay!

It was such a unique and fascinating feeling to have planned a human life that was now coming to fruition. I’m not one to get into where life begins, whether its when the embryo is created, or when the brain is formed, or maybe just with that first kiss, as somebody once suggested, but I was tickled that it was happening somewhere.

BJ had some ugly bouts with sickness during the first few months, as I recall. She didn’t suffer that much with Gabe, but it sure hit with this one.

As with our first child, we were looking forward to having the kid be either gender, but if we had a choice, we would have chosen a girl. We had our little boy, and with as cute as Gabe was, we were really interested in seeing how cute our little girl child would be. I was a little concerned, knowing BJ’s personality, and the thought of that being rolled up into a daughter of mine, with the appropriate heartstrings and hormones and whatnot made me a little concerned.

Also, as with the first child, the name planning began quickly. I don’t remember off the top of my head all the other names that were on the list. I know for boys, BJ was thinking about Xander, Leo, and several others. For girls, we had kinda given up on the “Anastasia Plum” that Gabe would have been, but still couldn’t come up wiht any great ones.

Shortly after finding out that BJ was pregnant, the whole September 11, 2001 thing happened, and I spent a long time wondering about the kind of world we’re going to be bringing this little creature into. I guess everybody did, back then. As I said before, I’m glad we got the chance to see Washington a month before that happened, when things were a little more simple, and a little less scary.

—

Around that time, also, I had found an escape out of the job I was doing. An old friend of ours was a manager of a structured wiring start up company, and called me up to see if I’d be interested in working for them, installing computer networks, home theater systems, and cable and phone lines. It would pay a little more than I was making, but it was a chance to do something else, and I jumped on it.

Not to dwell on it, because I think the best intentions were out all around, a month later I was quitting, and everybody was very angry at everybody else, because nothing quite met expectations.

Great. So BJ was pregnant, and I was out of a job. Luckily, the boss at the first job, the one I hated, was able to get me right back in. Insurance and all. It was great, and taught me something about burning bridges, and the importance in not doing it unless you had an airplane or could fly or something.

The job still sucked, but I didn’t mind so much anymore.

—

Meanwhile, time passed, and BJ and “Cletus the fetus” kept getting bigger and bigger. We finally went in for that ultrasound, and as we examined the images, the nurse and tech agreed that they were “99% sure that it was a girl.” The nurse added “In 11 years, I’ve not been wrong on this”.

Indeed.

—

Now that we had the sex, the naming began in full blast. We settled on Sadie for the first name, but couldn’t come up with a good second name. We tried and tried, but nothing sounded right. We loved Sadie, and we’re going to change it, but just needed some inspiration for the middle name.

It came, to me, one night. I was in that little twilight zone between sleep and wakefulness, what I suppose would be the first stage of sleep, and it hit me: Blue.

Sadie Blue Kilpatrick.

It was perfect.

—

More time went on, like it normally does, and we had our baby shower. The subaru broke down spectacularly on the way, slipping a belt, which really made it an interesting day.

We got some great gifts, including a blanket and a piggy bank with “Sadie” embroidered on them. I still have ‘em.

BJ kept getting bigger and bigger. As I mentioned before, she’s a small girl, much like Eaves, so when she’s pregnant, she’s PREGNANT.

—

Meanwhile, at home, all three of us were getting excited. Gabe was thrilled at the prospect of being an older brother, and was behind the thing the whole time. In fact, we let him originally tell BJ and my parents that she was pregnant, which made him feel so important!

We had a game, that everytime he did something silly, he’d have to change another diaper. By the time the kid was born, Gabe had gotten up to 124 diapers. He never changed one, the brat.

One day, he came home with some red spots on him, they looked like bug bites. We were at the Blueberry Farm at the time, as I recall.
A few days later, BJ started feeling bad.

A day or two after that, she started getting the red spots.

Do you see where I’m going with this?

BJ had never had chicken pox. Never. To this day, I don’t see how a kid gets through the landmine that is childhood without picking up chicken pox somewhere on the way. It boggles the mind. I had known that she never had it, but also that she never had the flu, and just assumed that she had one of those mighty immune systems.

I mean, she never got sick. Well, other than morning sickness. Ironic, eh?

Anyway, although MastaG had had the chicken pox immunization when he was a kid (which they wouldn’t give to BJ, for whatever reason, telling her that if she didn’t have it yet, she wouldn’t ever get it), he picked up a tiny case of it, that manifested itself as those ‘bug bites’. The boy didn’t even know he had the pox, and neither did we.

But boy howdy, at 8 months along, in March/April, BJ sure knew she had it. It was ugly. She had the welts all over the place. I still have several pictures from that era commerating it, and to her dying day she had a dozen or so scars it left on her. I remember looking at her big pregnant belly, covered with red welts. She had em in her nose, and on her eyelids. She was miserable, but as a testament to her strength, she took it in stride. BJ was a hell of a strong girl. Sure, she loved to be babied, but when it came down to it, she’d be up, looking after Gabe, doing laundry, and playing on the computer while at the peak of her poxness.

As a precaution, she called her OB-GYN, who did a check of the amino fluid to make sure that everything was OK.

I recall that day well. I had to work, couldn’t get out of it, because I was going to take all my vacation when she had the baby, and I was stressing. I had been offhandedly worried the entire pregnancy that something would go wrong, in that way of a husband who has a pregnant wife will, completely impotent to do anything about it, but unable to get it out of the mind.

My phone rang, and it was BJ.

My heart was racing. My hands were shaking. I asked her how it was.

“Ever heard of a girl with balls, Jake?”

“… what?”

“I said, have you ever heard of a girl with BALLS, JAKE?”

“Uh… … … what?”

“Its a BOY, Jake. They fucked up the first ultrasound, and its a boy!”

—

I was shellshocked. In fact, I didn’t know the meaning of the word shellshocked until that very moment. I had to get outside and walk around. My mind was officially blown.

Sadie wasn’t Sadie. I’d been calling the fetus Sadie for months, asking how my little girl was, picking out patterns with BJ for little girly rooms, and generally preparing to be the father of a little girl.

Not another little boy.

—

It took a few days to get around that, and then a few days to get over feeling guilty over fears that I didn’t love the kid as much knowing that it was a boy. Looking back, it seems like such silly emotions, knowing the amazing little guy that he is, but when you’re facing the unknown, I find you tend to overdo the emotions. Or, something about the clarity of hindsight. Whatever.

But damn, we had to come up with a name!

It took some doing, but we came up first with Ash, and then with Asher. I’ll be honest, the decision was somewhat influenced by Bruce Campbell’s legendary Ash Williams, but the truth is we both loved the name Ash. It did not occur to us that the main character of Pokemon is also named Ash, and has hence been the first thought of people asking what our inspiration for the name was.
Friggin Pokemon.

I’m not sure where BJ came up with Asher, I don’t think I’d heard that name before, although I’ve encountered it once or twice since then. I loved it, because I don’t see it as a name that anybody else in his class will have, but at the same time, is a ‘manly’ name. Asher. Just rolls off the tongue, and I still love the name.

Just needed that middle name.

—

By now, the big day, May 7th, was fast approaching. After the difficulties of Gabe’s birth, it was decided all around that a scheduled c-section would be the best way to go. 7 AM on May 7th came in no time. We had no signs of impending labor before that, in fact, BJ barely had any Braxton-Hicks contractions, which means Ash, like Gabe, would have probably hung out in the womb 2 or 3 weeks after the due date. BJ was happy to be evicting the kid.

We dropped off Gabe on May 6th, and enjoyed our last night without a baby. It was nice, because this time we KNEW what we were in for. We knew about the sleepless nights, and the uncompromising nature of these little bastards. We new about the stuggles to get the things to sleep, the frustration, the hopelessness that comes when you have a kid screaming, but we also knew about the first stares, first smiles, first rolls. We couldn’t wait.

May 7th, 5 AM, we were up and heading to the hospital. They found us a room, which was very small (which surprised me, because the rooms for the c-section gals are much smaller than the big birthing rooms for those women who prefer to squeeze out the kids, despite the c-section gals being around for longer periods of time). Seriously, the room was tiny.

BJ had some blood drawn, and I felt the ol’ fight or flight adrenaline raring up. I held her hand, at the side of her bed, being chipper, moving out of the way occasionally for the doctors and nurses, just trying to console and reassure her. I wanted to take her fear and trepidation, and replace it with my hope and excitement. I really had more fear and trepidation than her, but I fancy myself a decent actor.

When they put in the epidural, BJ started blacking out. I panicked inside. She woke up, it was just the stress getting to her, but it set things back a bit. They came back a little later, and were able to get it done. I was seeing those tell-tale twinkles of light which mean that the brain is about to shut down for a little unscheduled neepy-nap, but I wasn’t going to do it while she was still around.

Finally, she got loaded down with the epidural, was sufficiently numbed, and was brought out to the OR for the birth. This time, unlike Gabe’s birth, I was part of the equation.

They gave me some scrubs, with instructions to head to the OR in 5 minutes, which would allow them the prep time they needed. I took that time to go to the bathroom, and promptly started to pass out sitting on the toilet.

After a bit of time I got up, splashed water on my face, and steeled myself again. I stopped by the waiting room to tell BJ’s folks and Gabe that we’re about to start, and headed into the room. They were waiting for me, BJ pretty impatiently.

I was actually pretty excited about seeing the operation itself, seeing the incision be made, and seeing Ash be removed from her. She was concerned, because she’d heard of stories of men not finding their wifes attractive after seeing their guts, so she didn’t want me to. I thought that was silly, she was BJ, she’s the only woman I’ve ever loved, I’m not going to not find her attrractive.

So I snuck a peek, and it was awesome. Yes, I’m weird.

I found BJ to be a gorgeously beautiful woman until her dying day, so neener neener, BJ, I was right.

—

Asher was born around 7:30 AM on May the 7th of 2002. He came out with a big black head of hair, and only got an 8 out of 10 on that ’see how alive the kid is’ scale that they do. He was a bit purple when he came out, and didn’t immediately start crying, but the vacuum took care of that. We got to hold him immediately after birth, and, after he was cleaned off, and with BJ’s and doc’s permission, I was allowed to bring him out to the waiting room to meet Gabe, and BJ’s parents.

Introducing Gabe to Asher was one of the best moments of my life, bar none. Its one of those things that I’ll always be able to look back on and say “That was right. I did that correctly.”

—

We still didn’t have a middle name, and the birth certificate lady was getting twitchy.

—

I went with the doctor to see Ash be circumcised. Now, circumcision was something that we had discussed. We both realized that theres really no reason to circumcise the kid, that the medical reasons for doing it are practically null, but we both agreed that we would. I felt obligated to be there to witness the event, since we were going to put this newborn baby to a knife for reasons that we couldn’t define.

I watched the doctor put the clamp on, and Asher turn purple with screams. I watched as she calmly cut the foreskin, and Asher was hitching with sobs.

I put the salve on, and helped her bandage it.

I’ll never have another child, but if I did, I’d never be able to circumcise him, if he were a boy. Putting a baby, just forming brain synapses, and whatever impressions that blank slates like an infant form, through what amounts to mutilation is not something that I’d do, just so that he’d have a penis like we’re more used to.

I was able to calm him in my arms, and BJ finished the job when I got him back to our room, with the tit.

Asher took to nursing like a fish to water, and I’m so happy for that. BJ and he bonded in that way that she and Gabe weren’t able to, and I fully think thats the reason that Asher has always been more ‘her baby’ than Gabe was.

Eventually, it also got me off the hook for those late, late nights, because he didn’t take to a bottle at all. BJ didn’t consider that quite fair, as I recall.

—

The middle name came to us two days after Ash was born, for reasons we’ve that have been in this post.

James. BJ’s dad’s name.

Asher James Kilpatrick.

Our family was now complete.

All things come in flashes. You take pictures of time in your mind, memories of moments, and freeze them, like a camera, until some days its all you have left.

Our hermit years, 5 or so years after moving out of the rooftop apartment, are like that. In these years, we set the cornerstone for our family.

—

BJ and I couldn’t afford to live on our own with my piddling Pizza Hut income without going into debt, which is something we didn’t want to do. If we moved back into her parents house, we could try to go back to school, and get some kind of worthwhile job.

Gabe was tickled to be living with Mamaw and Papaw, although he was still just a year or so old.

Wait… hmm… set a calendar now. Get the facts straight…

February 1996 - BJ and I began

November 1996 - Gabe was born

March 1997 - Moved to rooftop apt.

August 1997 - Moved to BJ’s folks house.

Right, there you go. So he wasn’t a year old yet. Good old facts!

—

We were back in BJ’s bedroom, although the world wasn’t quite as small. Because we were back at her parents house, friends still came over, but not nearly as much. We’d sequester ourselves in her bedroom as much as possible when Gabe was asleep, watching TV, or playing on the computer.

Gabe loved it. He grew quickly. Flashes of time are all I have from that era.

I recall one day, he and I were out on the front porch. Everything still felt like a chore, because I was impatient, so we’d go out on the front porch, or outside, and I’d wait for him to get fidgety, or bored, and we’d head back in the house so I could do something else. I loved the boy, but didn’t yet appreciate being a Dad.

Anyway, we were on the front porch, along with a hornets nest. Normally, we stayed away from the part of the porch that had the hornets, but I turned my back to look at something, and with the celerity only belonging to the toddler heading for danger, Gabe was gone. I turned around and found him, sitting on a step, surrounded by frenzied hornets.

PANIC.

I grew up the son of a beekeeper, so I know the rules for bees. No snap movements, not necessarily slow, but fluid. I wasn’t sure if that worked for hornets, but it doesn’t matter, because before I could realize what I was doing, I was in the mass of hornets, trying to shield Gabe with my body, and get him the hell out of there.

I watched one of those bastards land on his little fat hand, and sting it. I was running away, and it was in slow motion, the plunge of the stinger, Gabe’s reaction. He received no other stings, and I was unstung. I seem to have a freaky luck to not bear the burdens of my family that I’d rather endure than see them endure.

Anyway, Gabe was freaking out. Screaming, snot pouring, hand swelling up, we brought him inside, and took care of him.

Thats one of those flashes.

—

Another is a New Years party at a friends house in Norris, BJ and I there, drinking. She got sick, and I helped clean her up. Poor girl.

Another year, during that era, same house, same time, BJ and I were watching a friend we didn’t know too well sledding down the hill in back yard. We watched him sail down into the woods, past our view, and heard the crash and yell of a drunken guy hitting a tree on a sled. Good stuff.

Unfortunately, that guy died a few years later, in a car wreck. I didn’t know him, but knew him well enough to mourn him a bit. His name was Dee.

—

All the moments of tenderness still run together. Holding her hand, kissing her forehead, all these things are things that I feel like I’ve done all my life. They don’t stand out, other than to be what the rest of my life was sweetened by.

—

After a year or so living there, we were really itching to get out. We had talked with a friend who lived in low-income housing in Clinton, and got on the waiting list. A few months later, we had an apartment, for $10 a month.

BJ and I were both students, going to Roane State. We had done a play together, driving from Andersonville to Harriman every day for a month, to be in “The Good Doctor”. I, ha ha, had the lead role. BJ played my wife in a few skits, and we even had a pretty well received singing duet as an old couple. I don’t remember the words, but it was awesome. I always meant to do another play with her, but we just never had the chance.

I digress.. apartment, right.

We moved into Gatemanor in Clinton, and were thrilled to be there. Gabe was 2ish by then, I don’t remember exactly when we moved in there, but I know he turned three when we lived there.

These years were golden. We set up the place, we had a dining table, we had a bedroom for both of us, we had our own bathroom. We were able to invite family over. We made friends with neighbors, but still didn’t have that party place atmosphere. There were a few reasons for this, one was because the friends we had that were in high school the previous years were now in college, and it was a pretty long drive. Another reason was because we were settling down, and content to do this.

I started growing my hair out long. BJ got a job at the Store of Knowledge in Knoxville, and learned how to juggle devil sticks. Theres a video on Youtube of her doing it, but it doesn’t do justice to her skills, because she wasn’t used to the weight and feel of the ones she was borrowing. She’d be able to toss it 20 feet in the air, of throw it across the room to me, and catch the stick her her sticks when I threw it back. She’d juggle the stick unconsciously, while talking to me, or distracted some other way. She was so proud to have found a talent!

By now, she had quit school, and my slacker nature (as well as the need to have somebody watching Gabe while BJ worked) found me quitting before too long also. Over the next few semesters, I re-enrolled once or twice, but never got more than a semester or two before quitting.

I was being a “Mr Mom” and loving it.

Gabe, now about 3, and I would go on long walks. We’d walk out of the complex, across the train tracks to a gas station, where we’d get a drink or a candy (if I had some change) and sit on the benches outside and wait for a ‘monster truck’ to pass by. This being Clinton, TN, we were usually happy. Then we’d walk down the road a quarter of a mile or so, past the Pizza Hut where I’d worked, pass a few other shops, pass the fire station which sometimes let Gabe in to look at (or, gasp, climb on) the big red trucks. We’d head to Big Lots, and look at toys. Then we’d walk back home on the train tracks, looking for interesting rocks.

—

We lived, that first year, on $5000. Total income. Yes, we had food stamps, and assisted housing, but got no welfare, because we didn’t feel right taking it. We felt like kings. I remember that first Christmas, we didn’t have the money for gifts until Christmas Eve, and we went to the dollar store to buy stuff for each other.

I got BJ a crossword puzzle book, and bag of pens, a plastic box (thats still behind the TV, holding the superfluous remote controls) and a Kwanzaa doll christened ‘Kwanzaa Don’, and hung on the entrance to the bedroom/bathroom area of the house, to bless all that went under with his Kwanzaa blessing of whatever it is that Kwanzaa is.

We also eventually acquired his evil brother, Pedro, a marionette with six guns, a sombrero, and a sadistic smile, that was hung in the kitchen.

We wrapped the Christmas presents with the comics section of the previous weeks Sunday paper, and opened them that night. It was great.

—

Time passed, as is its wont. As time went on, we found our housing going up (because I wasn’t a student), so our discretionary funds went down. I finally figured I needed to get my ass a job.

I had computer skills from way back, but never on a professional level. I tried riding that big internet wave in the late 90’s, but found that I needed experience, and the willingness to work tons and tons of overtime at all hours of the day, and after my time at Ryans, I wasn’t inclined to sacrifice that much.

Eventually, I signed up with a headhunter job finding place, who lined me up with a job at Clientlogic, here in Oak Ridge, very shortly after it opened, doing DSL tech support.

A real job. This bad boy was paying 9 bucks an hour, which was a fortune!

BJ and I loved doing the math. At 9 X 40 hours, we could afford all sorts of stuff! We could get a real apartment!

Which we did, in Oak Ridge. We moved here in 2000, in a townhouse we found on Wakefield Rd. The landlord was a cop, a really cool guy, who ended up quitting the force after finding out about his wifes indiscretions with, well, the entire rest of the police force. And our neighbor. She was a bit of a whore.

We had stairs now, and two bathrooms (a luxury I miss today, in our 1 bath house). I had a real job, BJ could afford to quit the Store of Knowledge (the drive to Knoxville was a real pain), and Gabe was able to start going to the Oak Ridge Preschool, which did him a WORLD of good.

By now, friends rarely came over. We missed having the social contact, but didn’t really try to make friends. I’ve never been one to make personal friends out of co-workers, for reasons I still don’t really understand, and BJ didn’t really get out a whole lot. Her Corolla had died several years ago, and we had an 90s Subaru station wagon, but I took it to work, still leaving her with no ride. I worked the early shift, which I have preferred working to this day, from about 6 - 3.

I was good at my job (still am, I think), and got promoted pretty quickly. Eventually, I found out, I became the highest paid hourly worker there. I was offered a chance at management, but passed it up, again, because of the time demands. I just didn’t want to take that time away from my family, and I feel so completely justified by that. No matter what other grievances she’d be able to dig up on me (and believe me, she would) she wouldn’t be able to say that I held a job closer than her or Gabe.

Never.

—

Again, time went on. We made friends with the guy who owned the townhouses next door, and after 6 months living in our first townhouse, we moved into one of his. They were identical from the outside to the ones we were in, but because of a fire years ago (which claimed the lives of two poor little girls in one of the units, hiding in a closet) they had a much nicer interior, and a big assed back porch looking out on one of the greenbelts in town, protected woods. It was pristine. Sure, if you look in any other direction you see either townhouse, townhouse, or parking lot, but from the back, ahh, there were woods.

We’d go out there, every once in a while. Gabe and I, mostly, he’d be about 4, and we’d enjoy the walks in the woods. We’d walk down trails in the Greenbelt and end up a few roads down, then we’d walk back. There was a park on the way, and we’d often stop to get a drink from the fountain, and he’d play for a bit while I sat. He played by himself a lot, because there really weren’t many other kids in his life. Preschool helped him with that, and he didn’t, and doesn’t, seem to possess any of the social awkwardness I felt at his age.
By now BJ was working again, night shifts at the video store, which was a sweet gig on account of free rentals. I’d bring Gabe in every once in a while to watch her. She was a perfectionist. Videos had to be on the right shelf. They had to be neatly spaced. She’d do it quickly, but very throughly. Even up to her dying day, when she’d go to the video store, she’d bitch about the sloth applied to the videos. I’d laugh.

—

Around this point, we both realized that we were both thinking about the possibility of having another child. If we waited much longer, Gabe might be too old to have fun with the kid, and we’d lose that nice “getting rid of kids in our 40s” buffer we looked forward to. Both of us were leery of mentioning it to the other, for fear of getting shot down.

Yes folks, a planned child.

BJ even figured out the right time to start working on the kid, so that she’d give birth in the spring, so as to avoid a hot summer of pregnancy.

We finally quit smoking at this time, habits that we picked up before meeting each other. It was hard, but we both did it cold turkey. We survived, and were proud.

We also bought tickets to see Radiohead, which was its own tragic and horrible story. I wrote a review for it for a Radiohead fan website, you can see it here (look for the one signed by J). We didn’t realize it, but that child was about 2 weeks along during that ill fated trip to DC.

BJ was pregnant again. The threesome would end soon.

I have totally discovered that one of the channels we have shows Rockford Files followed by Magnum PI.

Now, I think there are cool things, and then there are cool things, but there isn’t much cooler than that. It is totally negating my irritation at the fact that the phone client I use to take calls doesn’t work wirelessly yet (seriously, why not? Thats silly, Avaya. Dumb name, too)

The boys are off at school today, and I’m getting some quality work hours in. Its pretty slow, which is a good thing too, thus giving me time to clean up the kitchen, eat an orange (my new breakfast, aren’t I being healthy) and drink two cups of coffee (*BING*).

—

Thanks for all your kind words about Pigpen. I’ve always relied on BJ to tell me if I’m screwing the children up (because, seriously, what parent ISN’T convinced that their kids are going to wind up warped as hell), and I miss that safety net. She didn’t start out the best mother in the world, let me tell you.

Actually, our early parenting years were less than stellar.

—

First of all, the birth of our child, what is supposed to be a magical event, was miserable. UT sucked. Seriously. If I’m ever decapatated, and I’m right next to UT, and they have super amazing head reattachment technology, my head will croak out “Noooo UT… seriouslyyy… it suucks”.

The nurses treated us like hell, because we were 18 and on Tenncare. They were rude, they were unhelpful, the acted like they had somewhere else to be. They were all older women. It was just a horrible time, or at least thats how I remember it.

BJ had Gabe at 11:19, as I said, and didn’t hold him until around 8 PM that night, both because of her condition, and because Gabe was a little yellow. She didn’t get a room until 5 PM or so. When they finally brought Gabe in, she tried and tried to nurse him, but he just wouldn’t take it. He cried, and cried and cried.

Around 3 AM, we finally decided that we had to get some sleep, and had the nurses take him to the nursery. We had a night of guilt.

The next day, we had Gabe back, and he cried and cried. He still wouldn’t nurse, so we were feeding him these little glass premixed bottles of formula, which is what the nurses fed him while BJ was asleep after giving birth.

Gabe never nursed. He was a bottle baby, because he just wouldn’t take to the tit.

—

After a few days like this, we left the hospital. BJ was still very, very worn out, from the 10 or so hours of serious labor, and then the emergency C-section. She was pale, her eyes were dark and sunken, when she finally got out of bed, 8 days after having Gabe. By then, Gabe was pretty much screaming all the time. We were convinced that we were screwing something up. He would be red-faced and scream. Constantly.

The only way we could get him to sleep was in one of those baby swings. That was it. He’d sleep for the 30 minutes it was wound, and I’d pass out in the chair next to him. When the swing stopped, he’d scream again. I started the swing, he’d sleep for another 30 minutes.

I remember one night, up with him, watching Conan O’Bryan, and he made some sort of joke about talking to all the parents up with crying babies.

I did not find it funny.

—

Weeks passed, and Gabe still screamed. From about 3 PM until about midnight, he’d scream. We went to a tenncare clinic in Fort Sanders (we were still living at Huntington Place), and they said it was colic, and they had no idea why. Colic, like the illness that claimed BJ, evidently is one of life’s great mysteries (along with the pyramids).

In fact, the only way, we found, to get him to stop screaming, was to stick him in a baby carrier that went on my chest and walk him around the mall. West Town Mall. To this day, I hate the mall. We went there every day, spent 3 or 4 hours there, with a sleeping tiny bratty screamy baby on my chest. He even had a little angry wrinkle between his eyes, that he has to this day if you see him at the right time.

Finally, at 6 weeks, we got the idea to switch him to soy formula, and thus solved the conundrum that had plagued the scores of doctors (well, the one that would see us) regarding his colic - he was lactose intolerant.

Doctors. Puh.

—

We couldn’t do it. Even with him feeling better, BJ hated being in the house alone, so she was having her mom come down and help every day. I wasn’t working much, because BJ hated to be with him alone at night (not that she hated Gabe, and she felt so incredibly guilty for her feelings, but she just wasn’t ready to be a mom yet), so I stayed up at night with him. I got no sleep, and ended up working a lot less. We couldn’t afford our apartment.

Ultimately, we moved into BJ’s folks house again. It was good to have help, and it cemented Gabe’s strong relationship with BJ’s parents. I don’t know how we’d have done those early months without their help.

I worked part time, and BJ still didn’t work. We got along great, still, but the young love was transmuted into an exhausted, knowing love. We still tried to go out occasionally on dates, what with the built in babysitters, but we didn’t have much in the way of money.

Time passed. There are pictures that remember those days and weeks and months, but I don’t have any solid memories of them. Gabe grew constantly. I recall sitting at nights, in BJ’s folks living room, watching a big screen TV (that we ultimately ended up with, and discarded). We’d eat popcorn that BJ’s dad fixed, we’d always break off tiny pieces for little walking Gabe to snatch up. When he had to poop, he’d go hide in the corner to do it. That was a funny quirk.

They were still golden years.

—

Still, BJ and I weren’t ready to give up on our youth, that teenage energy and stuff. We were children of the grunge thing, tattoos and piercings (well, one piercing. I didn’t care for them myself, but BJ got her lower under lip pierced, and it was cute for 6 months, until she took it out for 5 minutes, and it healed up. D’oh). We made friends, I met Mojofilter and some other friends that we have to this day (that were at the Barleys thing with us). We were hanging out, partying, having a great time. We came home, and we were parents again.

I don’t know if I feel guilty for that or not. We were good parents, and always had Gabe as our first priority, but when we could get a babysitter, buddy, we were gone. Luckily, BJ’s folks lived there. We were gone maybe once or twice a week, for an evening.

I kinda wish we hadn’t done that, but at the same time, I’m glad we did. BJ and I needed the US time that so many parents couldn’t get. We were young, we were deeply in love, and we had a kind of relationship that isn’t supposed to work out. Luckily, it worked out.

—

In March of 1997, I had been working at Pizza Hut as a delivery driver for a few months, and we rented an apartment in Clinton. It was above a law firm. They were shit for landlords.

When we moved in, the guy (I guess he was a paralegal or something) that was showing us the place had a few screws loose. He had a habit of twitching his eye whenever he told a lie, like when he said there were problems with the fridge. When we questioned further, he said maybe we should have our neighbors keep our meat.

Indeed.

The new fridge came a few weeks after we moved in.

Now, this place, landlords aside, was awesome. It was on a rooftop, and had roof access to the kitchen. There was a ladder from the parking garage to the roof, and I loved getting into the place like Batman. It was sweet.

As it was centrally located in Clinton, it rapidly became the party place. Now, we only had one or two real PARTIES, but we had a few good friends over damn near every night. I found delivery driving to be a fairly lucrative business, so we were able to afford the alcohol and party favors, as well as food, and stuff.

We still weren’t the best parents in the world, but we tried pretty hard. We were selfish, tho, and still didn’t want to let the party time over. Gabe spent maybe two nights a week at BJ’s folks house. He was always asleep when friends came over, and we kept him isolated from the noise and smoke. I felt vaguely uncomfortable doing this, but other parents we knew lived that way, and their kids seemed fine.

Maybe it wasn’t as much that, as the whole life situation that I felt uncomfortable towards. BJ still wasn’t totally comfortable being alone with Gabe. She was always afraid that something would go wrong, and she wouldn’t know what to do. She was terrified of that, but wouldn’t let me know.

I had experience with kids, being that when I was 17, my little sister was born. I had seen 3 other little siblings growing up, and my mom is a nurse. I had a pretty good idea how to deal with problems that could pop up with kids, but BJ never had that experience, and she was panicked, silently, constantly, at the thought that something may happen, and she wouldn’t know what to do. That Gabe’s little airway would close, or he’d get sick, or he’d hurt his head, and there’d be nobody there to save him but her.

I recall one memorable day (and this is a story I haven’t told much) that BJ was really, really wanting me to come home. I was working a day shift at the Pizza Hut, and would have gotten off around 5 or so. It was 2, and I swung by the house on a delivery (because it was that close) to say hi and give her a kiss.

When I got there, she asked me to call back in sick. She said she wasn’t feeling good, that she was in a real bad mood, that she didn’t want to be alone. She begged me.

Now, that had been a thing, and I’m more than willing to get out of work. Seriously, I’ve always been one to be talked out of work pretty easily. When I’m there, I work hard, but when I’m not, I sure like not being there. However, at this point in time I was on a “grow up, you bastard” trip, thinking that I had to build a work ethic if our lives were ever going to improve. I told BJ that I’m going to have to go back to work.

She told me she REALLY wanted me to stay home. She got mad. I got mad. We said things to each other that I just don’t remember, and then I told her I’m not going to fight. I walked out the roof door in the kitchen, on my way down the ladder.

A window shattered behind me, with BJ’s fist sticking out of it.

I uh, ended up staying home. Miraculously, she didn’t get cut by the window that she burst. It stayed broken until we moved, along with another window that Mojo broke a few months later while trying to get the damn thing open.

It worked out, because that summer our air conditioning went out, and the lawyers never got it fixed.

Lawyers. Puh.

—

We moved out of there, again, back into BJ’s parents house for the next year, because the bills got on top of us. Our sojourn on the rooftop apartment lasted only about 6 months, but it was a high point for us. Well, hell, they were all high points, but this was really the end of ‘Jake and BJ, party animals’. After this, we slowly headed down into a nice life of hermitdom, which lasted until around the past couple of years.

Those years are when we really started creating what we have today, and what we became, up until now.

So, we drove home from the doctor, knowing that the worst thing that could have happened had happened.

BJ was pregnant. Our lives were over. A BABY.

Oh shit.

I recall the drive home from the doctor, BJ and I were sitting in the back seat of her parents conversion van, and her mother was driving us home. Silence. The kind of silence that you can cut with a knife.

BJ and I held hands. My stomach was a twisted knot of fear. The fight or flight urge was big, and all I could do was sit quietly in the back of the van with her, waiting for the moment when her parents would sneak up with a gun on me (not that they’re those kind of people, but DAMN, I got their baby PREGNANT!).

I tell you this right now. I don’t think anybody is ever qualified to say a damn thing about abortion until they lay together in a bed late at night, with a centimeter long love fetus developing in the womb of your 19 year old, educationless and jobless girlfriend. Hell, I don’t think I’m qualified to say it, but I’ll always regret that that night, an abortion sounded like the only idea that would work.

The next morning, we changed our minds. We were going to be parents.

—

And with that, we had to grow the hell up. We fell deeper into each other, i dedicated my entire being to making sure that our live together would be good.

I started hunting for jobs. I had very little work experience, the part time job at Sophies, and a high school grocery bagging job were it. I ended up washing dishes for 6 bucks an hour (big money for me, at the time) at TGIFridays.

It was evil. The rest of the back staff were 20 something year old thugs, who didn’t like me, for reasons I don’t understand. I was young, and probably dumb, but damn, they were assholes. Total dicks. I worked 8 hours a day, and then came home to BJ, a 30 minute drive both ways. We had to save up money to get our own place, we weren’t going to be those kind of people who would raise their kid at the parents house.

TGIFridays closed ‘unexpectedly’ 3 weeks after I was hired. Bastards.

—

While I kept looking for gainful employment, BJ scored a job in the housewares section of Sears, at West Town Mall. I used to drive her to work, and then beat the street trying to find a job (which was really REALLY hard, nobody wanted to hire somebody without experience). I remember reading, and really enjoying Anne Rice’s Memnoch the Devil in the smoking section of Sears, while I waited for her to get off work. It was always such a joy to see her walk out, with her big smile, and growing belly.

She wasn’t having a ton of fun either. She developed a pinched nerve in her hip around the 4th month that bugged the hell out of her for the rest of her term. She was gaining all the weight she lost during her months locked in her bedroom the previous winter (yes, I ruined the only time she was really, really happy with her body). She was working with some real battleaxes in the houseware department, who weren’t interested in sharing the 5 percent commission she’d get on that luggage, and just helped themselves to her customers.

To this day, because of the crappy assed way that Sears does their employees (and ultimately, their customers), I wish them nothing but ill. I love walking through the dying store in Oak Ridge, just to bask in it.

I digress.

We were still looking all over the place for an apartment, but didn’t really have the money to do it.

Finally, I got the job I needed. BJ was just about to give up on Sears when it happened, so it couldn’t be at a better time,

—

BJ’s sister Sonja worked at Ryans on Kingston Pike at the time, and was able to talk them into giving me a dishwashing job there. The store was really hurting for a dishwasher, it turned out. They split the job between me and another guy, with a couple of non-english speaking folks working as backup. Because of the lack of back house workers, I was able to average about 80 hours a week during this time. At six fifty an hour, this made for some decent scratch, at least to us!

We moved into a very modest little apartment in Knoxville called Huntington Place. The demo apartment looked like a quaint, decent little place. The actual apartment, well, not so much. It was kinda like the cabins you’d stay at in camp, old buildings, wood floor, cheap plaster walls. There were four units that shared a front door, a screen door, so the hall outside was cold in the winter and hot in the summer.

It was awesome, it was ours.

I remember the day we moved in there, and got our first telephone number. I had to work (of course) and BJ and her folks moved us in. By now, BJ was probably about 7 months along, in late summer. I was working a double shift, from 6 AM until about 10 PM or so (usually later, because there are always those customers who have to come in right at quitting time and spend forever eating… bastards), and she called me at work to tell me she had a surprise for me!

I went to the new house, walked in there, took a shower (BJ couldn’t stand the smell of the nastyness that would be on me when I got off work, so she always marched me into the shower as soon as I got home, and then we’d drain the inevitable infection from under my fingernails… dishrooms, good stuff), and she sat me down to a candlelit dinner of spaghetti and toast. She was proud, because she made the toast (BJ never was a cook, her mom made the spaghetti).

It was the most romantic meal I have ever eaten. It was dark, and our new home, with most of our stuff still in boxes, was lit by the flickering orange light of the candle.

We went to bed, and I got up for work the next day.

—

And the next day, and the next day. By now BJ had quit work, and was getting BIG. We had no friends down in Knoxville, and only one car that I had to use to go to work (she didn’t like driving that late at night).

She sat, alone, in a little apartment, with nothing to do but watch network TV on rabbit ears, and read the same books over and over again. To this day, I regret the pain that she had to have suffered in silence, with nobody to talk to, while I worked.

When I got home, we’d go out to eat. We didn’t have the sense to save money, what I made we usually spent on food at restaurants, just enjoying ourselves before the realities of parenthood jumped in. We’d talk, we never once, in the years we were together, had a meal where nobody had anything to say. We were always so comfortable with each other.

We tried different restaurants. Afterwards, we’d go back home to watch a little TV, and go to bed.

Life was so good to us. I mean, looking back, it was a hard time, but we were so damn happy we never noticed. The days I’d have off work (and I did have them, once a week or so) were wonderful, we’d just stay home, and play cards, or we’d drive out and wander around. Life was so good.

I had proposed to BJ in those early days, playing around in her bedroom (we were wearing nice clothes, for the heck of it, and I offered my hand in marriage to her, which she accepted in style). In May, while she worked at Sears, I snuck enough money to buy a $140 engagement ring and make it official. I went down on one knee in the mall. She wasn’t surprised, because we never really had to say anything about marriage. What we had was so much deeper than marriage, it became moot.

Anyway, one day during those Huntington Place/Ryans days, in early October, we figured we’d go ahead and get hitched. She didn’t want a wedding, which I was more than happy to agree to (I wondered many times during the years if that was a concession to me, but she assured me that she saw a wedding as a huge pain in the ass. I often cited this reason to friends as one of the reasons I love her so much). I had a day off work on a Tuesday (I think), and we got dressed up and moseyed down to the Knox County Courthouse, and got married.

They had a pastor there, a poor old guy who must have recently had a stroke, because we couldn’t understand a word he said as he did the little quiet ceremony. It was witnessed by the clerk, and a guy from the News Sentinel who put the announcement in a paper. Theres a copy of it in a red rubbermaid container in the attic.

We wanted to make the wedding ours, so nobody knew about it until afterwards. We called her parents, and they bought us a bottle of champagne and a new TV. The TV is in my bedroom now, just to the left of where I’m laying here, writing this post.

On our wedding night, we went back home, and watched ER (so it was a Thursday, not a Tuesday!), and drank the champagne (her only pregnancy alcohol, so don’t get bent out of shape). Life was so good.

—

I can think back on many private memories in that apartment. Moments that would be meaningless to anybody but me anymore, but moments that I treasure more than anything earthly. Moments of tenderness, moments of love. Moments of laughter, of happiness. We had each other, we knew by then that we’d always be together. I loved her more every day, which I continued doing to this day, and still continue doing. I’ve always told her that, but I don’t know if she believed me.

Meanwhile, BJ was getting bigger and bigger. We had baby stuff that our parents were getting for us, a crib, a swing, carseat, all the accessories of a baby in the 20th century.

We were poor, and on Tenncare, so we got the kind of treatment that you get when you’re poor and on Tenncare. BJ always complained about the bedside manner of her OBGYNs, and the clinic she went to.

We found out that the baby was going to be a boy, and picked out names when she was around 3 or 4 months along. We were at the Chattanooga library, poring through book names. The boy name we came up with pretty quickly, Gabriel Ian. We had a computer game called Gabriel Knight, and BJ really liked the name Gabriel.

The girl, was a bit tricker. We finally settled on Anastasia Plum for the girls name. This is a name that I would still place on a little girl with pride, although I think I’m about the only person in the world who thinks so (I’m sure some of you out there will prove that wrong), My sisters always joked that we did great boy names, and crummy girls names.

Well, turned out that it was a moot point, because it was going to be our Gabriel.

Sorry about the backtrack

—

So, bigger and bigger and bigger. BJ was huge. She was a little girl, 5′2″, and I’m 6′4″, so fate would have to dictate that BJ be stuck with a mammoth baby. The due date came and went, and sailed by. I have reams of paper that we wrote contraction times on, getting closer and closer, but never making that 5 minutes apart rush to the hospital time.

BJ was getting pissed. She’d constantly say to little fetal Gabe “OK, Mommy wants you OUT! Time to get OUT!”, but, like G, he just wouldn’t respond.

Finally, on the night of November 20, we had false labor pains take us to the hospital. The doctor there couldn’t believe that BJ wasn’t induced, but he must have checked who our insurance was, because instead of inducing, he stretched BJ’s cervix.

Damn, that hurt. Hell, I could feel it, and I don’t even have those parts. Shit, I still feel it. Ugg.

He said if THAT didn’t start it within 24 hours, to come back for the induction.

—

We went home, and went to bed. Got up the next morning, November 21, and I went to work. By now, I was working 30 or so hours a week, because I wanted to be ready to take off at a moments notice. I had about two weeks off scheduled, so I could help take care of things.

I was terrified. Absolutely terrified. No amount of reading, or work, or preparation, can get you ready for having a kid at 18. Nothing. It is damn near the scariest thing you can do in this world, the sudden, lifelong, obligation to a helpless human being.

Mortifying.

—

The 21st came without event. I went to work, and came home, and still nothing. BJ started contracting around 8, and she said they felt ‘real’. They were still 30 minutes apart, so we tried to get some sleep. I remember laying down with her, knowing full well that this would be our last sleep as a childless couple. After this sleep, there’d be a kid.

We woke up at about midnight (rather, I did, I never did believe BJ slept that night) and headed to the hospital. I called family and friends, and they started making it up.

The maternity ward was packed at UT, so BJ had to go to a common room, and I wasn’t allowed in. That was a crushing insult.

I wanted to be with my wife. She needed me, we were inseparable, and heres this battleaxe of a nurse telling me to wait.

I waited. I guess when it comes to hospitals, I’m a follow the rules kinda guy. Or a sissy.

Finally, at around 8 AM, BJ got a room. I went in with her, and irritated her by dozing off a few times. She finally threw a book at me, which kept me awake.

She was tied down to the bed. She wasn’t dilating very much, only a few centimeters, but that didn’t seem to concern the nurses or doctors. I sat in there with BJ for a while, when suddenly, around 11 AM, the fetal heartrate machine started wigging out!

Nurses flooded into the room. It was decided that an emergency c-section was needed, that Gabe was going into fetal distress, and by the way, you can’t come, wait in the waiting room. I had to be escorted out, because I wouldn’t go.

I missed the birth of my son, at 11:19 AM, on November 22, 1996.

10 years ago, we became parents. Right now.

—

Gabe was shown to us in the waiting room, and placed in the nursery, where a nurse fed him a bottle, which may have caused his preference for the bottle rather than the tit. BJ never was able to nurse him, which I didn’t mind so much, because it meant that I got a share of that feeding time.

I used to stare into his face, those tiny eyes, and clutching fingers, as he sucked the bottle. I stared, and I wondered what he’d look like now. I don’t remember what I saw, so I’m not sure how accurate it was.

—

BJ, you did an amazing job. We created him, and he’s a marvel. He’s so strong, BJ, he tries to look after everybody else, even if I don’t let him. He loves you so much, but he keeps going with a smile and a joke.

He’s our Gabe, BJ. Thats our baby boy, now 10 years old. I’m sorry you missed this, angel.

I love you. So. Much.

You became an amazing mother, despite how scared you were.

I love you.

That date has always been the most important one to me. I mean, sure, November 22nd, 1996, when I became a Dad, and May 7, 2002, when G became a brother (and BJ and I congratulated ourselves on a planned child, somewhat of an oddity in our family) are high on the list, but neither are as important to my heart as February 16. October 14, 1996 we got married, but thats a piece of paper. February 16, thats something real.

It had been a long few months, that went by really, really quickly. I loved college life, way too much, and was completely screwing up school. I drank, and smoked the doob, and stayed up late, and got up late. I went to maybe 20% of my classes. Freedom had gotten over my head, and I was loving it.

I had dramatically failed many of my winter classes (but not French, ironically, the one I seemed to dump to hang out with BJ those times), leaving my Dad to consider inserting a foot into my ass, Red Foreman style, but I kinda got the feeling he was letting me sow my oats, so to speak. I crafted my first website. It was very, very unimpressive, and lost to the 1s and 0s graveyard now.

I occasionally wondered about BJ. I hadn’t heard from her, as I said, since dropping her off in college, although I had heard from third parties that she was back in town, at her parents house. I didn’t have the number, or the sense to look it up, although I did try calling all the numbers I has scribbled around in the dorm room a few times. I figured that she had gone the way of many new friends, that something more interesting came up, and she was pursuing that. More power to her.

I continued to work at the cafeteria, one of the few obligations that I fulfilled, probably because this obligation gave me cigarette and beer money. One of the student supervisors there was throwing a party with his 3 roommates down at some fancy ass’d apartment on Forest (or maybe it was the road past Forest) on 2/16/06, and I was on the list. It was going to be big, and cool as hell.

On that day, I finished up my shift at work (an lunch one, that got me off at about 4), and instead of wandering over to a friends house, I figured I’d dig some quiet time in the dorm. I sat down on the 386 and got busy with some minesweeper for the next 2 hours, which was not what I commonly did, but I guess I was charging my batteries for the party. I was interrupted from maybe my dozenth losing game by a phone call.

It was BJ, in the lobby.

My heart skipped. She had come to visit a friend on the girls side of the dorm, only she wasn’t there. She looked up my number and called me.
“Hey BJ, its good to hear from you! Hell yeah, I’ll be down there in a minute!”

I walked down, and saw a sight that will never leave me, and a sight that made me fall in love with her, completely, irrevocably, immediately.

She was stunning. She had been at home, depressed, for those months, over I guess the way life was going. She had been doing a lot of chatting on the internet (IRC, in its toddler years), made friends that way, and retreated from the real world on a peanut butter diet.

She was wearing a low cut sweater, grey, tight on her amazing chest, with bell bottom jeans that hugged her hips and flared out at her feet like fire.

Her skin was creamy, milky, with dark, flowingly curly hair that reached down to her lower back. Her lips were red, and young, and full.

She was a goddess that I was allowed to see.

I remember walking up to her, realizing that I did NOT see her as a friend, that now she was one of those unattainable, unbelievably beautiful girls. She was always attractive, but GOD. This was indescribable.

As I walked up, she gave me that sweet, warm smile, ran over, and gave me a big hug. Somehow, she hadn’t noticed that she had become Aphrodite while I was gone! She was the same, sweet, fun, BJ!

I couldn’t believe it. It was just too good.

—

We talked in the lobby, and walked outside to the courtyard. My blood was pounding so hard through my body that I don’t know how I managed. She didn’t seem to notice!

I asked if she was hungry, and took her to Krystal. As we ate, we talked about our love lives.

She had that nasty break up with her X, and valentines day a few days ago was ruined by it because he came to pick some stuff up. She was mad, but didn’t seem hurt. I told her that my girlfriend back home had embarked on a relationship with my roommate, unbeknownst to me. It truly didn’t matter to me, because the girlfriend really hadn’t meant anything to me in months.

I remember what we said next.

Me: So, do you have a boyfriend now?

Her: No.

Me: Well, I was thinking… if it was OK… I could be your boyfriend…?

Her: Sure.

She said it so commonly, like I asked her if she’d like a refill, or if she had a ride home. It was sweet, and sincere, but so… common. A lifetime, an entire life, by that one, sweet, pedestrian response. I hear it in my ears today.

I tried to restrain my joy, to match her common demeanor. I held her hand over the table, the first time. It was soft, and small, and warm.

Eventually, I told her about the party, and invited her along (or maybe I had done that before we professed our… uh… relationshipness. She came to the party with me, but I wasn’t watching anything but her.

At one point, I ashed my cigarette into an empty $5 cup, that I thought was mine. It was hers. She forgave me, but never let me live it down. Whenever that party came up in conversation in all the years to come, she reminded me of my faux pas.

She came back to my dorm room, and spent the night with me.

I went back to her house with her the next morning, after a tasty meal at Waffle House, and spent the next few days there.

She was my first, and only.

We listened to the White Album often, lying in bed together, holding hands, watching the sunrise, talking. We talked of dreams, and desires. Of memories, and futures. We talked of everything under the sun in the early light of those first mornings.

Eventually, I went back to the dorm room, but 30 minutes apart was a pretty big distance, and so, early that March, I packed some clothes and moved into her parents house. She never really asked them, and I never really met them. They were pretty damn permissive, but good people.

Those early days, wow. There was nothing but budding love. I had professed my love for her, without hesitation, very early, before I moved in with her, probably in the last two weeks of February. It took her a week or so to admit that she loved me too, but she had been hurt before, and I hadn’t. I was honest, I did love her. I knew it. It wasn’t just because of the ecstasy of the moment, it was that through all my life, the 18 years before, I had never had something so deep with somebody else. When we looked into each others eyes, something locked.

Our souls. I’ve wondered before, with love like ours, what the metaphysical origin was. I never thought it was just a coincidence, even in my most agnostic time. We’re two parts of a greater whole. Or we were.

I sacrificed my friendship with my roommate, and my family (at the time) to be with her. I happily tossed my schooling, and my own future, for the one that I wanted with her. Just a future that meant we would wake up at 5 PM, holding each other, skin to skin, every day, with our budding, but so deep, love. Locked in her bedroom, unless we went out for a few hours. We’d watch TV, we’d play solitaire on the computer together, we’d make love. Honestly, there was a lot of that. I was lousy at it, but she didn’t mind, and you know what they say about practice…

The days flew by in this blur. The outside world was forgotten.

Around April, she expressed concern that she was pretty late on her period. After a little while of denial, her Mom took us to the doc, and we both heard those two words you DON’T want to hear when you’re 18:

“You’re pregnant”