Happy Birthday

Last week Zachery celebrated his sixth birthday.

I still can hardly believe it. Everytime I look at him I am struck again by how, with certain things, time flows implacably fast. It can't have been six years damn it, I'm still trying to sort out this Dad-thing, still learning the do's and don'ts, how to cope, and yet like King Canute, I cannot keep up...

It just doesn't feel like six years have passed.

But it has. He is growing up.

Everything is so vivid, yet at the same time so far away in memory. I can't recall what in God's name I spent my time on when I didn't have him to deal with....

I can remember in clear detail the day he was born, the day we came home from the hospital...and the two days later when we shot back to the hospital as jaundice reared its ugly head and Zachery ended up spending the better part of a week sleeping under a sunlamp. We took shifts sleeping on the lumpy, hugely uncomfortable cot they supplied us, living on adrenalin and stale cafeteria ham sandwiches. After three days of near sleeplessness, it finally occurred to us to move the mattress onto the floor, so we could at least doze comfortably...

I still recall with delight the thrill of watching him learn to scoot around on the floor. One of our cats would lie on the floor, eyeing the baby with that narrow-eyed, wary cat disdain until Zack was almost in within grasping reach of the furry creature, who would then fluidly rise and trot away, carefully flicking its tail out of the baby's grasping hand.

I remember bringing home beanie babies for him when he was a toddler and then finding them days later nestled in the refrigerator's vegetable compartment, or stuffed in my shoes...sometimes sitting in the cat dish...

I remember singing Jamaica Farewell to him to get him down for afternoon naps, the feel of his head on my shoulder as I rocked him, the little hand grasping my hair or rubbing on my stubble like it was some magical talisman...and getting in trouble with my wife for succumbing to naps beside my boy when I should have been cleaning up or doing chores...

I remember how he used to stretch his arms out of his stroller, reaching upwards for his mother, saying "Up with me. UP! Up with me!"...

There have never been a better six years...

Comments are always welcome. You can reach me at dadchronicles(at)hotmail.com. Apologies for the relative dearth of posts - as they say, too busy living life to write about it right now....Thanks for reading.